Visual Writing and Thinking

A scared, lonely chicken seeing his phone is at 1% outside a G-Tech apartment complex at 5:32 am is the perfect description of my last night out. A series of unprecedented events led to me almost having to walk miles and miles through rain and cold in order to get to my dorm. It started like an ordinary night out, which turned to a scavenger search for the friend I swore I’d go back to Emory with. I lost them in Gold Room a popular club in Atlanta, and as the night progressed, and the club closed down, I was forced to look for them not only outside the club, but in the apartment complex we pregamed in. A couple of hours into the search, my friend told me he somehow (and inexplicably) managed to get to Emory. Knowing my friend was safe now, I hit up an uber to take me back home after such a perilous night… I did not expect for the uber to take so long, and my phone to be at the brink of death; the fact that my inability to get to Emory relied solely on the 1% of battery left on my phone instantly made me a chicken, hence my expertly crafted drawing.

I had many ideas of what to do before this one, but none came out quite as well. I would have a flicker of insight, but a combination of problems would usually deter me from continuing. These road blocks included difficulty with angles, lack of simplicity, and absence of creativity. When I thought about the swirls on my perfume housing, inspiration struck.

Since barber poles are usually red and blue, the pink gives it a “feminine” feel, hence the name Barbara. A difficulty I encountered was that I didn’t have a single piece of white paper large enough to draw on; instead I used multiple pieces of paper laid on top of each other. I had to take the picture from a couple feet up otherwise the angle would be off and the 2D illusion would be ruined. I considered writing the words “Barber Shop” as a sign next to the pole, but I thought it would take away from the simplicity since so few of the given examples had wording on them.

Sketch 3: Sunday Sketches Assignment

A professor of mine once told me to take risks that worked and for me taking risks involves pushing the boundaries of what is considered socially acceptable. I know that condoms are objects that people get embarrassed talking about them, so I thought why not make art out of it? Condoms always reminded me of elephant trunks so I might as well. I also think that the condom gave some three dimensionality to the drawing so that added something special to it besides the simple shock factor of it being a condom.

As I was pondering what to use for my Sunday sketch I looked down at what was in my hand: a fidget spinner. The idea didn’t strike immediately but I knew I wanted to use the spinner in some way. It was then that my sub-conscience picked up the sound of a passing helicopter and I quickly converted that into a sketch. I’m not the greatest at drawing helicopters so I was a little hesitant to choose them as my subject but I decided to challenge myself. I used cartoon images of helicopters as a reference and worked from there. I chose to add people to the helicopters to make the picture a little more interesting than simply two helicopters flying around. One struggle I encountered was how to show the helicopters were flying. I was first going to show them flying over some town or land but couldn’t figure out the perspective and details to I chose to use clouds to indicate that they were flying. I really enjoyed this assignment and had a lot of fun thinking of ideas.

Link to the assignment here: Sunday Sketch Assignment