These were really rough, I spent a lot more time doing numerous digital drafts which I uploaded in the past.
A city is only as good as it's citizens, and a neighborhood is only as good as it's neighbors. As much as we try to make to make our facades look pretty, what really matters is the people living inside the walls.
Being a Wisconsinite, I really wanted to exemplify how every morning I can expect to look outside and see something different. The collage inside the frame is made purely of photos I took out my window in the past month. They were taken in different weather conditions and are of various subjects.
RiverWest is a fantastic neighborhood. It's never quite bustling, nor is it ever quite dead. It's hard to go more than a couple blocks without seeing anyone, even in the dead of the night. It's also an extremely diverse location, consisting of people from many different walks of life. The houses are all Polish flats on my block, so I wanted to hint at the uniformity while still expressing the diversity.
Josh, some great things happening here. Much possibility. A few comments: First off, great concepts, and great usage of texture and collaged elements. I believe the third and final composition is the most successful. I am drawn into the space you've created, the floor boards drawing the eye back to the houses, the pedestrians traversing laterally. Nice movement here. The second composition though, I feel, is stifling and a bit muddled. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at here. I think we're looking out the window, but the contrast is so high, the window frame so dark. You've placed the viewer in an awkward and confusing space here. We're not sure where we are. Pull back some, and give us some context. Working backwards, I think the concept for the first composition is strong, but the execution is a bit hollow. Literally. The space above and below the houses / faces hasn't really been activated. It's dead space for the eye to glaze over. How is the immediate ground drawing our eye up to the important elements of the composition? I believe this space could have been utilized a bit better, livening up the composition, and driving home your point- maybe we see people, like in the last composition, walking across this foreground? It is a "lively" neighborhood after all. In future illustrations, consider the viewer first- what space are you placing them in? What's the importance of that space?
ReplyDeleteConsidering these critiques, I do see this as a strong first project. A lot of experimentation happening here - good work.
I think my favorite of the three compositions would have to be the third. I really like the different colors used for the houses. At first I thought background(trees) were too different from the rest of the image, because it looks like they werent altered at all, but now I think that they give a nice contrast to the piece and create a nice background for the other collaged elements.
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