Grunge Triptych

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For my project proposal, I would like to do organics mixed with one of my favorite themes: grunge. I like the industrial roughness that can elicit a specific dark feel, or a creative feel, to most wall papers. The feel can exemplify simple things in the picture, drawing attention the even the smallest but smooth additions to the pieces. The idea is to place simple images according to the rule of threes, having well balanced images, on a rough and moving surface. There will be plays of light and dark, and it’ll be based off red and blue colors.

Final Project

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For the final project I focused on organics with an abstra grunge look. I left the edges rough to keep a grunge and draw attention the the details that were a little better formed.

The idea behind it kept true, though I think that more highlights could’ve really made the pieces. I had to keep the acrylic fairly wet and work quickly, there is a good bit of layering in some of the pieces and the lighter bits still haven’t come through, perhaps it’s my lighting. I got soft lights…

Various Paintings

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

I’ve redone these a few times, except for the color discord, which I meant to be a little more playful than otherwise. Some of them you may see where I painted over the old attempts!

For the first one, patterns, I used acrylic on a thick canvas-type illustration board. It held the paint so well, I think I’ll use it again. That was one of the difficulties that I came across in painting the things I did on paper, it liked to wrinkle unless I taped it down very well, which lead to ripping of the paper at times.

The patterns were not too repetitive, but geometric. I ran into the evenness of repetition problem with the older attempts, and drew on the painted backdrop to gain complete evenness. Graphite is a little tough to get off paint, without stripping it off or grinding it off with an abrasive pencil, so some of it continued to show through, but I got most of it off. I liked how it came about, and the only problems I ran across were the paint peeling off the paper with the tape.

This was the color in discord piece, it’s very hard on the eye for me… Originally I had a purple background with all manner of light colors but that was incredibly busy and bothered my eyes and my mind so much I painted over with black, and went from there. Not all the shapes were greatly done either on the purple background, I kept losing a lot of the bright colors in the darkness of it. Even with the reds and yellows here, I needed to go over the same strokes again and again to get it to the vibrancy you see here.

For this piece, it was done in two using bright and warm colors to express movement and evolution, from a cool and controlled flame to a more discordious flame. Heh, you can see some of the previous attempts I mentioned earlier more than the other pieces. In some ways it adds more to the piece, so it’s an accidental but fitting mistake. Some of the reds didn’t come through as heavy as I would have wanted, they needed some layering to get where they were as well, of course I had a like background as well. Seems alright methinks.

Photoshop Lesson 7

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For this one I used a Komodo Dragon profile. The hardest part about this was not really hard, but rather, tedious due to all the geometric mapping that needed to happen before the picture was complete. I tackled this with patience and plenty of music. I used different shapes, not just a triangle, to keep some of the detail and to make the overall picture a little more interesting, and I thought that was pretty neat. Gives a sense of sharp movement, which I enjoy. I can only imagine what this would do to architecture or a famous painting.

Color Relationships

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For this project, for the one picture I decided to pursue in pointillism I gained the image from Dwell Magazine. Here’s the link on the article I read, and when I saw the image, I figured why not?

Cedar-clad guesthouse in upstate New York My image wasn’t quite as detailed. Pointillism, much like Stippling in drawing, is incredibly time consuming, and color still not really being my strong suit it took me a decent length of time to get to this point. I liked how the colors started to define shape and character from a distance, but at the same time when I work close to the piece I tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. I spent a lot of my time on the building itself. It’s the strongest part of this piece, the rest is rather abstract. I think I’ll continue to work on it, or start anew with a different approach, with minimal dotting.

Perhaps it would’ve taken me less time if I used a pure white background, and saved me some paint! but in order to see the white that I did paint, I used beige on wood for the background.

For the Van Gogh style, I didn’t know what to paint so I just started layering on the colors. This is what I came up with, trying for pillars of movement just to grasp the concept as… it seemed a bit wonky and groggy in execution for me:

IMG_20151025_164543620 There is movement, but not as much as I would’ve liked to seen. I think I matched up some of the strokes a bit too parallel to their neighbors, I’ll have to alternate a bit better next time. The real sense of completion is in the lower left corner, with the combination of colors there. The right side, being a bit… different in color, if I had used another lighter color, say more yellow or a blue even, it may have come together a bit better.

Another one I will have to explore later, with better resources at hand.

Project 1: Michael Bellon

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

This is the piece that I used for the complimentary colors project. Bellon is an abstract geometric artist who had interesting designs that I thought I would emulate, and attempted to in my project. I used the compliments, and it looks quite different, though similar. I think I could’ve pushed some of the color values a bit more than I had, maybe with a little more blending and a little more solidity. I had problems mimicking the shade of white that is consistent through his piece and,,, because I can’t quite draw a straight line ;), the proportions are a bit different than his own. The piece I constructed is made out of wood. Seems pretty ok to me, just.. I need to get the geometrics right next time 🙂

Portfolio 1

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

Based off of Wayne Barlowe’s ‘What Remains’ acrylic piece.

Project 2: Cubism

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

This is done on painted plywood, spraypainted blue as the backdrop with orange, purple, and yellow accents. I based it off the rigidity of some of the cubist works I saw, and for lack of better terms extended into actual ‘cubes’ to attempt depth in a color piece. For me, colors are very in the face and hard to tone down at times, except in very small amounts, as in grayscale mixed with just a hint of one color. The lighting kept reflecting where I’m at, and flickering at times, so this was the best version I could get. Ah, remote camps…

I wanted to capture a sense of movement, not sure if I have. Perhaps when I get home and have better lighting I’ll be able to take a better photo of this, which will adequately level the piece. The lighting makes it fade at the top :/

Color Schemes

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For this piece, the monochromatic, I went back to black and white on wood. It was quite a bit different brushing on wood as opposed to paper, held up much better. As is usual of most of my pieces, I don’t even begin with a plan, I begin painting and see where it goes from there.

For the portrait piece I began a bit small, not very familiar or fond of using colors directly opposite of each other. This one turned out alright through, but I could’ve pushed the values a bit further for the shades. I kept to lighter shades of red and darker shades of green, which turned into brown at some points.

For the Triadic piece I again began with a blob of paint on the paper. I’ve become very fond of letting the paint trail and fade from the brush at the ends, giving a sense of movement. I’ll have to keep working on my technique to actually grasp the movement, it’s very rudimentary here, but fits the purpose for the style I seem to be developing. I can’t paint a straight line worth a darn, so I go with however my wrist wants to paint. This time I got smart and put the lighter colors on first, I fought alot with the darker colors in some of the other pieces, I keep thinking of dry media as I begin the pieces… :/

For the Split complementary I ended up exploring more of the dry fade of the brush against solid colors. reminds me of watercolor, and it seemed appropriate with the green and blue. The orange was hard to place, and this was one of those pieces that I didn’t put the brighter color on until I realized where to put it…

The wrinkles on the paper drive me mad. They catch light everywhere. Time for an upgrade.

Oh I’m at no skill with color at all! but this was fun nevertheless.

Reds and Purples

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Crystal Tingook

For this piece I used only three colors: purple, magenta, and a light red. No black or white was used in this,and it took me awhile to complete. I thought about the work as a nesting Phoenix, just about ready to burst into flames. It’s not as detailed as I would’ve liked, and the colors kept blending so I had to keep in mind the vibrancy of the colors as they appeared. Some of the colors I wanted to blend as well at certain areas, and others I wanted a clear definition of the line, so I played with the opacity of the paints by diluting as needed.

It was interesting as what I started out with was a blob that I knew nothing of how it would come out. I started with just a round thing, as I normally don’t even used purples or reds, I tend towards blues or greens, but I could come up with nothing for those.

The feathers took awhile to do, but with some layering it came together fairly nicely. I think the issues that bothered me the most were blending and layering, and repainting to get what I needed as I progressed towards the lighter colors.

Color and Design

Author Archives: Crystal Tingook