Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Final Exam Extended

In order to have a descent final project, The Final will be due Friday by 2pm. You can slide it under my office door CA 208. (the door says Amanda Dieter). I will be on campus all day. I will have them ready for pick up December 15th outside my office. Please email me if you need to pick them up next semester so I do not leave your projects outside.


jessicaablock@gmail.com ( in the subject please type Design 1 Final Pick-Up)


Also if you choose to redo the color wheel you will have until Tuesday the 13th. I will also have these ready by the 15th.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

board: 15x17.5
picture:8x10
borders: 3.5 on (3 sides) and 4 at the bottom

Final Project

Remember Class vote, these will be due Tuesday. We will have a crit at the end of class, the last 45 mins.


Also I will be giving you back you color wheel next class and if you choose to redo it, you will have until the 13th, at 10am to turn it in.




Tuesday, November 15, 2011


This project will test your understanding of color and its more objective, measurable qualities. You will recreate Itten’s Color Wheel using only the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue). Below Itten’s Color Wheel I want you to lay out three gradient scales using the complimentary colors blue/orange, yellow/purple, and red/green.


Begin with a piece of mat board trimmed to 15"x20", often you can buy it pre-cut to this size. The exact center of your color wheel should be 7.5" inches from the top of your board and 7.5" from the left side. Set your compass to 3.5" so that it makes a perfect circle measuring 7" in diameter. Your color wheel should fit inside this circle.


The first compliment scale should begin 1" from the bottom of your color wheel. The scale itself is 1" high and 5" wide, thus you have room for five 1" squares. The first square should contain the yellow hue; the last square should contain the hue violet. The squares in between should gradually transition the viewer from one color to the other, so naturally the middle square should contain equal parts of both yellow and violet. The next scale orange/blue should begin ½” down from yellow/violet. The red/green scale should begin ½ down from red/green. 4" should remain at the bottom.

Thursday, November 3, 2011



Would you like to hear the creators of the Shiner Beer campaign and branding speak? If so, join the Ad Club on Nov. 10th at 5:30pm. Representatives from McGarrah Jessee will be at the meeting to present this exciting design campaign.

Where? KIII TV Studios

PLEASE RSVP to me at amanda.garcia@tamucc.edu before Nov. 5th if you would like to attend. I will need a hard rsvp so we can order food for you!

It is business casual attire. There will be various members of the club in attendance therefore it is also a great networking opportunity if you are interested in the fields of design, media, communications, PR, marketing, etc.

Hope you can make it!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Project 3 Value: Due Nov 8th

This project will test your ability to describe light as it falls across your still life. As
you know, light reveals a form through a range of values (tones of gray). You will
learn to modify your lights and darks to suit your needs: emphasis, synchronicity,
composition, etc. Choose objects for your still life that tell us a story about you
and arrange them in a way that encourages dialog between the objects, but also
the viewer.

Begin with a piece of white mat board trimmed to 15"x16.5". Turn your mat board
so that the longest dimension (16.5") is running left to right. Measure down 3.25"
and across 3.25" and begin your 8"x10" picture window. You should notice that
your top and side margins measure 3.25", but your bottom margin measures
3.75".

Before you begin, use painter’s tape to mask off the boundaries of your image.
Then use the grid to help you draw the still life inside the picture window. Lightly
block in the proportions with your pencil and then paint it carefully with your black
and white gouache paints. Start off thinly laying in your darkest darks. As you
move up the value scale, lay in the lights with more pigment. The darkest areas
of your painting should be relatively thin; the brightest areas of your painting
should be relatively thick.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Project 2: Line Due Oct 18th


You can start with two pieces of 15"x20" illustration board and cut 3“ from
the bottom (preferred) or you can begin with an over-sized piece of mat board
and trim it down to two 15"x17" boards. Next, you should lightly draw an 9"x12"


Take one of your black and white photographs and draw a grid on it. Your
grid should divide the picture into fourths, so in effect, you will end up
with sixteen rectangles. By dividing your portrait into smaller pieces,
you should be able to manage the proportions of your head as you draw it
on both pieces of your 15"x17" board. Use contour lines only to illustrate
yourself on one board, with the other, choose between cross-hatching and
cross-contour. Cover with tracing paper.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Homework

Make a rectangle 1 x 6 inches with in this make 1 gray scale of hatching and one gray scale crosshatching. And one simple drawing showing contour line and hatching/crosshatching.


Also for Tuesday please bring in a few different (printed) photos to start working on your self portraits. (black and white will help you more)


Reminder NO CLASS THURSDAY September 29th

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Shape Project-Due September 22nd

This project will assess your understanding of shape and its potential as an
element of art. You will continue exploring the principles of organization, as you
did so well on Tuesday, but now I am asking you to address the positive and
negative space. We will examine next class together examples by Henri Matisse, Nicholas Wilton, Kara Walker, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Wassily Kandinsky and Arshile Gorky and others to further our study.

After choosing a motif from the handout (letter, number, suit from a deck of
cards, traffic symbol), you will then draw it about the size of your fist on a sheet
of 8.5x11 paper. You will then crop it, bend it, rotate it, flip it, fold it and punish
the paper as you see fit. Find as many abstract designs as you can—exhaust the
possibilities. You might decide to use some combination of photoshop, freehand,
illustrator, or streamline to distort the motif. In class you will probably use a loop/
magnifying glass and hand-fashioned “L” brackets. Do thirty thumbnails in your
sketchbook before transcribing your favorite design to the illustration board.






Shape Vocab.

  1. Actual Shape- A positive area with clearly defined boundaries (as opposed to an implied shape).

  2. Amorphous Shape- A shape without clear definitions; formless, indistinct, and of uncertain dimension.

  3. Curvilinear Shape-A shape whose boundaries consist of predominantly curved line: the opposite of rectilinear.

  4. Decorative (shape)- Ornamenting or enriching but more importantly in art, stressing the two dimensional nature of an artwork or any of its elements. Decorative art emphasizes the essential flatness of a surface

  5. Equivocal Space- A condition, usually intentional on the artist’s part, in which the viewer may at different times, see more than one set of relationships between art elements or depicted objects. This may ne compared to the familiar “optical illusion”

  6. Geometric Shape- A shape that appear related to geometry; usually simple, such as triangle, rectangle, or circle.

  7. Implied Shape- A shape that does not physically exist but is suggested through the psychological connection of dots, lines, areas, or their edges.

  8. Kinetic (art)- From the Greek work kinesis, meaning “motion”; art that includes the element of actual movement.

  9. Mass- 1. In graphic art, a shape that appears to stand out three dimensionally from the space surrounding it or creates the illusion of a solid body of material. 2. In the plastic arts, a physical bulk of material.

  10. Objective- That which is based , as closely as possible on physical actuality or optical perception. Such art tends to appear natural or real; the opposite of subjective.

  11. Perspective- Any graphic system used to create the illusion of three dimensional images and/ or spatial relationships in which the object or their parts appear to diminish as they recede into the distance.

  12. Planar (shape)-Having to do with planes; shapes that have height and width but no indication of thickness.

  13. Plane- 1. An area that is essentially two-dimensional, having height and width. 2. A two dimensional pictorial surface that can support the illusion of advance or receding elements. 3. A flat sculptural surface.

  14. Plastic (shape)-1. Element(s) used in such a manner as to create the illusion of the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface. 2. Three-dimensional art forms; such as architectures, sculpture and ceramics
  15. Rectilinear Shape- A shape whose boundaries consist of straight lines; the opposite of curvilinear.
  16. Shape- An area that stand out from its surroundings because of a defined or implied boundary or because of difference of value, color, or texture.

  17. Silhouette- The area between or bounded by the contours, or edges, of an object; the total shape.

  18. Subjective- That which is derived from the mind, instead of physical reality and reflects a personal bias, emotion, or innovative interpretation; the opposite objective.

  19. Three-dimensional- Possesses, or creates the illusion of possessing the dimension of depth, height, and width. In the graphic arts, the felling of depth is an illusion, while in the plastic arts the work has actual depth.

  20. Two-dimensional- Possesses the dimension of height and width, especially when considering a flat picture plane

  21. Void- 1. An area lacking positive substance and consisting of negative space. 2. A spatial area within an object that penetrates and passes through it.

  22. Volume- A measurable amount of defined, three-dimensional space

Monday, September 5, 2011

For Class Tuesday Sept. 6th

Be prepared with your Principles of Organization exercise tomorrow morning. We will be going over this first thing Tuesday morning.


Also bring your sketchbook for notes and to begin sketching out your first major assignment. We will go over your first set of supplies that you will need for this projects.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

7 Principles of Organization

  1. Harmony - May be defined as a pleasing relationship between different sections of a composition. It occurs when elements or independent parts have characteristics in common - such as repeated colors, similar textures, shared edges, etc. These areas become vitality linked; their commonality makes them visually related or pulled together.

  2. Variety - The counterweight to harmony, the other side of organization essential to unity. Harmony brings a work together while variety imparts individuality. It is a factor of visual contrast - an isolation of elements and images. The introduction of variety actively separates areas of images to make them more exciting and let them stand apart.

  3. Balance - A sense of equilibrium between areas of implied weight, attention, attraction, or moments of force.

  4. Proportion – Deals with the ratio of individual parts to one another or to the whole. For example, the length of an arm in comparison to the length or the whole body is a proportional relationship.

  5. Dominance - Where certain visual elements assume more importance than others within the same composition or design. Some features are emphasized, and others are subordinated. Dominance is often created by increased contrasts through the use of isolation, placement, direction, scale and character.

  6. Movement - Eye travel directed by visual pathways in a work of art. Movement is guided by harmonious connections, areas of variety, the placement of visual weights, areas of dominance, choices in proportions, spatial devices and so on.

  7. Economy - The distillation of the image to the basic essentials for clarity of presentation. As a work develops, the artist may realize that the solutions are resulting in unnecessary complexity. Economy means composing with efficiency - expressing an idea as simply and directly as possible with no arbitrary or excessive use of the elements.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Welcome, Fall 2011

Welcome to ARTS 1311, Design 1

Please see text book below:
Art Fundamentals, Theory & Practices, 11th Edition


Jessica Block
832.628.9905
jessicaablock@gmail.com or jessica.block@tamucc.edu