Design Principles Task 2

Design Principles Task 2 - Visual Analysis

21.02.2025 - 07.03.2025 
Week 3 - Week 5
Jolin Ceria (0363784)
Bachelor of Design (Honors) in Creative Media

Table of Contents

Lecture Notes

Visual Analysis is a method of understanding design that focuses on the visual elements and principles. Part of it's process involves describing and explaining a visual structure and recognize how a designer chooses to communicate their ideas and implement things in their design. It's an important part of developing one's visual literacy, as it trains your ability to read and critically interpret images.

There are three main steps in visual analysis:

  • To observe by closely looking and identifying the visual elements in a design and describing them in your own words, preferably without prior information about the design beforehand. Observing a design without prior information will help you look, think, and find good language on your own and helps you build your own thoughts and opinions on it.
  • To analyze and think over your previous observations and make statements based on it. This process involves taking certain visual elements from a design and identify and combine the design principles that make up and complete the work.
  • To interpret and make your own meaning based on your own observation, analysis, along with facts, both from the designer and other sources, to figure out what the design means to you and what purpose it serves to be created.

Instructions

Task

Visual Analysis

Fig 1.1 - Departure of the Winged Ship

Observation

The painting depicts a ship heading out to sea, with the ship having huge butterflies in place of its sails, along with several other butterflies flying about. There are several humanoid figures standing atop the rocky ground, painted with the color black as if they are shadows. Three of them are holding butterfly nets, and one of them is crouching, facing the water. In the sky, there are clouds sweeping to the west.

Analysis

The ship's hull being painted brown, along with the butterflies mainly being painted with warmer colors such as yellow, orange, brown and red, giving the piece some contrast against the predominantly blue background. It should be noted that none of the butterflies have wings that are predominantly cooler colors, besides some usage of green, black, and one of the butterflies having an off-white color that almost looks blue.  The ship's bow is facing away from the foreground, seemingly away from the humanoid figures on the rocky land. The bigger clouds are painted in such a way that creates the illusion of the wind blowing the ship's "sails", making it seem like there is movement. The butterfly nets that the humanoid figures are holding are painted in very vibrant colors and visibly flowing in the wind, which also makes it stand out against the background and from the figures holding them, making them another example of the presence of contrast and movement. 

With the exaggerated size of the butterflies to better fit as substitutes for the ship's sails and the placement, this piece also has an obvious example of emphasis, along with there being many butterflies being an example of repetition. There is also a more subtle example of emphasis with the composition of the piece itself, seen in the humanoid figures having dark colors and their placement being close to the foreground, emphasizing how the distance between the humanoid figures and the ship. Every aspect of the piece, from the clouds, to how the ship moves, to the butterfly nets and the butterflies, go together to create harmony.

Interpretation

Butterflies are a symbol of freedom, but they are also a symbol of hope and transformation and a representation of growth. Ships are also seen as a symbol of freedom and can represent journeys. It can represent one's decision to set out on a journey, whether literal or metaphorical, and how the ship is facing away from the viewer can represent one's decision of leaving things that were previously in their life behind while taking the next step in life. The butterflies clinging onto the ship are a way to show that these decisions are made based on one's own free will and without any external influence on their journey to achieve said goals. The clouds represent the wind that blows the ship, and as wind is needed to properly utilize a ship through it's sails, the clouds are the physical manifestation of the push, the strength, the encouragement to move forward. 

The humanoid figures holding the butterfly nets can be interpreted in different ways. Butterfly nets symbolize the will to achieve goals, and the humanoid figures can be seen as separately trying to achieve their own freedom through catching the butterflies. One could take a more sinister approach and see the butterfly nets as a symbol for restraint, and interpreting the humanoid figures trying to catch the butterflies as an attempt to strip one of their own freedom and agency and to restrain them.

Sketches

My main goal is to utilize the principle of emphasis, due to the fact that I felt like it was a little lacking. I also feel that taking advantage of the emphasis principle helps me illustrate my interpretation better.


Fig 2.1 - Sketch 1

For this sketch, I made pretty minimal changes. I shrank the ship and made the shadowed figures much closer to give the impression that they have been placed much closer to the camera. This was done to give emphasis towards the distance between both subjects. I used the rule of thirds as a guide for how I wanted to place the ship and the humans, along with the butterflies, and I plan to add more of them.

Fig 2.2 - Sketch 2

For this sketch, I decided on an entirely different angle, making the ships face the viewer and placing the figures farther away. I also made the ship larger and closer to the camera and tried to make an appealing composition using the rule of thirds grid for both the ship and the figures behind it to give some emphasis, and cut the top of the ship slightly to imply it was too big for the whole ship to be seen. Although I liked the idea, the cloud placement feels slightly dubious, and I feel that it would be less difficult if I had just moved the island with the figures down.

Fig 2.3 - Sketch 3

For this sketch, I wanted to darken and desaturate the side of the sky and sea that had the shadowy figures and make the butterflies and the ship more vibrant to increase the amount of emphasis and contrast. I also tilted the ship closer to the water, gave the water more waves to give the impression of stronger currents and harsher conditions to better emphasize my interpretation. Similar to the first sketch, I shrank the ship and made the figures larger. This was the only sketch I colored, as I felt like coloring it was necessary to emphasize what I was trying to do, unlike the two previous sketches. I feel that rather than using the rule of thirds, the golden ratio would have been much more helpful, especially with the placement.

Feedback

Week 4 (02-24-2025):

  • Try to avoid using too many descriptions, and keep your observations plain
  • Underpaint the descriptions in your analysis with the principles that you are trying to implement
  • Try to not rely too much on the painter's interpretation

Reflection

I got pretty busy with some other things, and due to me not checking Microsoft Teams until the deadline already passed, I unfortunately wasn't able to complete this task on time  (I never touch it in my free time or when I'm outside of class, I don't really know why I just really hate opening Microsoft Teams or touching academic subjects whenever I'm not doing anything related to my studies, which is honestly my fault); I'm a bit nervous going into the next task since I don't think I have ever tried emulating oil painting digitally before, and I'm not sure if I should try doing my own thing instead of doing oil painting, but I think that would be a fun experience. I'm not particularly good at finding things I want to improve about something, especially since I'm not really the type to feel the need to do such a thing.

On another note, my laptop has been bugging a lot recently. It keeps randomly slowing down? No idea why that happens.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Design Principles Task 3

Image
  Design Principles Task 3 - Development and Design 03.03.2025 - 19.03.2025  Week 5 - Week 7 Jolin Ceria (0363784) Bachelor of Design (Honors) in Creative Media Table of Contents Lecture Notes Instructions Task Design Process Rationale Feedback Reflection Lecture Notes Lecture Notes from Task 1 Lecture Notes from Task 2 Instructions Task Fig 1.1  Departure of the Winged Ship Information Title: Departure of the Winged Ship Year: 2000 Artist: Vladimir Kush Size: 80” x 100” Medium: Oil on Canvas Online Source:  Here We were to make our own designs based on one of the designs in Task 2 from our own choosing and a 200-word rationale detailing our choices. Design Process Fig 1.2 Sketch I'm using (I decided to use this concept but I used a composition similar to my third sketch) Fig 1.3 Progress report - 03/10/2025 This was the image I had initially given to Mr. Vinod to critique; While I was absent for that particular class I managed to...
Read more

Information Design FLIP Topics and Exercises

Image
  Blogspot! :) 2024-02-06 - 2024-??-?? (Week 1 - Week ??) Jolin Ceria [Student ID  0363784] Bachelor of Design and Creative Media in Taylor's University Information Design Exercise 1! We were tasked to arrange objects in a presentable manner with relevant indicators using pens. As such, I decided to use some flavored candies and grouped them based on their flavor. I ended up with two outcomes, a more general chart and a more unique one with the drink spilling onto the paper. Fig 1.1 Chart 1 Fig 1.2 Chart 2 Exercise 2! We were tasked to create a poster using the LATCH (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy) principles. I decided to use Minecraft mobs for this exercise. How I implemented the LATCH principles: Location: The realms/dimensions where mobs will naturally spawn Alphabet: Arranging all the mobs alphabetically per category Time: What time of the day the mobs can thrive/survive in Category: Based on their hostility Hierarchy: Sorted by how many hitpoints they hav...
Read more