Old Art

I'm a terrible blogger. This is really just an archive for stuff I'm working on, and as it is the winter vacation, I'm not working on anything. I still have some projects I need to make upload-compatible but that involves some technical juggling that I don't feel like getting into at the moment.

So, how about a look back to my freshman year in college? I was going through old photos and saw these. But I never put them up anywhere so I guess it's okay.

Here are some figure drawings from my Honors Drawing 1 class. I had a lot of fun, and my professor said I seemed to be a natural. These were done in the sports center, watching students play basketball.

This is just a line exercise from the same class... it has really influenced me though.

A collage I did for Color and Composition, also from my first semester of collage. Sprung from a portrait I did of a good friend.

Apologies for the bad photos! I did not know better all those two years ago.

Update to Photography: Awkward Family Photo

So to appease my Photography professor I redid the Awkward Family Photoshoot by doing my original idea, which was utilizing the innate awkwardness of gingers (just kidding).
I was in the studio and used my ginger friends and the cloth outside the Fabric Design studios as a back drop. Enjoy!

Photography Blast

I've been neglectful about uploading my projects as they come, and even more so about my photography assignments.
Let's just have some highlights from the semester.

Photography for Graphic Design
ARGD 3090, Ben Reynolds

 Words Assignment

Letters from the environment, mine are made out of vines.

Portrait Assignment

 

Traditional Portrait of Lisa

Environmental portrait of Lisa- she's got a painted car! (which I am incorporating in my current photography project as well)

Environmental portrait of Tiffany- in her lab. It was difficult to work with the lighting in the room, and to be able to accommodate the environment, where I couldn't move extraneous objects. I tried to get a good shot with her reflection in the glass. 

 Traditional portrait of Tiffany

 Traditional portrait of Becca, my roommate. I didn't get to use it in the final project because we never got to shoot an environmental for her, but I like the way this looks.

Product Assignment

 For this project we chose and object and then took formal and environmental photos of it. I chose spoons. I don't really like the way the formal ones turned out as much. For the environment I had my friend Andrew play with them. This one was his profile picture on facebook for a while. :-)

 This was the one I actually printed for the project. I think it's funny.

 Awkward Family Photo Assignment

This assignment is more casual, just to supplement the stop motion animation project we are also currently doing. I took this photo of my grandpa at Thanksgiving. My professor said it was actually a good quality portrait, so I may have to do another photoshoot to get a more "awkward" photo.

Our current project is a stop motion animation- I'll upload the video eventually!

LDIDW

For Illustration class we're going back through all the projects we've done this semester and we're cleaning them up for a "final five."
The first one I did started from a logo identity project for a fictitious design works studio with the acronym "LDIDW" (Lamar Dodd Industrial Design Works, for the curious).
It was a really schizophrenic project and mine ended up having very little to do with LDIDW.
For the final five my professor just told me to take my images and apply them to a personal identity.
So, instead of LDIDW, we have "sg" and "gray."

Done with ink and oil pastel.

Fun with Type

Today I was playing around with geometric typefaces and I really got into it.
I made a few during class and then when I got home I made another for a birthday card for my friend.
I drew them reversed on the back of patterned paper and cut them out.
Designing them is fun and tough because you have to think of a system so they all see to belong together.

Doin' Some Good

To promote a sense of civil responsibility and open our eyes to the possibilities of graphic design outside the commercial sphere our Layout teacher assigned a project with a humanitarian feel. We made posters for unicef campaigns; mine are the Tap Project and Believe in Zero.

Tap Project: Providing clean water for the needy.

My idea here was to show giving or care in the form of water.

Hearts are the most sophisticated tool of a graphic designer.

Believe in Zero: My poster focuses on the fight against malnutrition.

I began with the idea of "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Previously that was part of the copy, but it has been nixed through revision.

I'm not sure this gets the point across (please note Africa in the apple and the Rx on the sticker)

but alas, one has to buckle to the demands of professors at times.

T-shirt Design

Just a quick update!
I'm in the Graphic Design Club at my school and we decided to have a T-shirt contest.
It has to be based around design but it didn't have to say "Graphic Design" or have an indication of our school.
Designed for only one side of the shirt, with only two colors, et cetera et cetera.
Here's what I whipped up.

It says "Life is Messy Clean it Up" which is a phrase one of my favorite professors would say all the time. A designer's motto I guess.


EDIT:

I went back in and gave it some touch ups to up the legibility on the word "Life." Can you tell the difference?
I also changed the background color and unfortunately when I had it printed it came out too dark and looks terrible. Oh well.
We'll see in a couple of hours how well people like my design!