As our art summative, we each made our own tile patterns based on different patterns. Here is the photo of my finished tile design and the reflection I did on my patterns.
For our summative pattern design, we were asked to create a coaster that used patterns to create shapes and value. We could use any patterns we wanted and any design we wanted, but we just had to make sure that the coaster was using patterns and that the patterns were balanced between all the different values; not too dark, not too white, some ‘gray’ areas. It had to look unified and balanced.
At first, I had no idea what I wanted to create. We had already looked at a bunch of examples in class of what people did last year and what professional artists did. I thought some of the examples were too intricate and that I couldn’t recreate it or that it just didn’t quite feel like my style of art. I was really scared to start my design because the thought that it was a summative project lingered in my mind. With the other assignments like the practice pattern design, I just drew whatever patterns I felt like drawing because there was no pressure to make it perfect, but no matter how much I tried to convince myself that this summative project was no big deal, I still could not get over my fears of messing it up. I had a few concepts that I was messing with in my mind at the beginning and the one I started out with was to have a coaster that ‘flowed’ between all the 4 squares. So instead of having 4 separate squares with different things going on, I would have one shape that was weaved through all 4 squares so that the 4 squares could all look different, but you could still tell that they were supposed to come together and make a coaster. The idea was that I could have 1 or 2 big geometric or organic shapes that went through 2 or 3 squares so that the squares were all tied to each other. I wasn’t really sure what shapes to put though because putting both organic shapes and geometric shapes together was hard to place on the squares since they kind of looked odd together. I eventually decided on putting about 3 curvy, plant like shapes on one side of the paper, and a rectangular strip going directly diagonal the opposite way of the organic plant-like shapes because they helped balance each other out. This concept for my design helped me to show the contrast in my 4 squares because I made them all very different from each other, but the organic and geometric shapes tied them together. Up until this point, I had drawn everything in pencil to see what it looked like before cementing it in pen. However, just having the organic and geometric shapes running through the 4 squares still didn’t make the squares seem unified, so I decided to draw lines stemming from the center, which made rectangles around the edges of every square. This time, I the coaster looked more together and I felt like I could trace it in pen without regretting it.
So after the general outline of the big shapes my planning of how the coaster would look was done, I started to work on the individual squares. As I said before, I planned my coaster to have 4 squares that each had a different vibe/movement. These squares that would normally look odd together because of the differences in pattern/movement are unified by my big shapes. So I started first with my bottom right square. I had no idea what I was going to do with this square, so I began by drawing a bunch of lines that I thought I could fill in with patterns. This is how I decided that this square would be one that’s very chaotic and very “loud” because of the all the different patterns that I would put in shapes created by the lines I drew across that square. I started out with drawing a pattern that I saw in one of the example videos that were shown in class. It looked pretty cool in the square by itself, so I kept adding more and more patterns in the different squares. In order to add more variety to the patterns, because since these squares were more black and white than somewhere in the middle, sometimes I would switch up the pattern, like in the half circles, I switched the coloring so that instead of being white striped the whole way, it was also black striped. So in that square, I wanted the colors to be mostly dark blue and white, not a lot of ‘gray’ because geometric shapes are more sharp, which is better represented by very contrasting colors (dark blue and white). So for the square next to it, I decided for more organic patterns in order to balance out the geometric square. Since this square was also the one where the curvy plant shape starts, most of the organic shapes I put, I tried to make them somewhat related to the plants. A lot of the patterns in this square were more gray than either dark blue or white since I tend to think of soft, harmonising patterns when I think about organic shapes. I also mixed in some geometric shapes in that square to emphasis that the 2 squares are supposed to come together, but are also completely different. For example, I put arrow shapes (geometric shape) in the curvy part of the square (organic shape), and I made the proportions of the arrows get increasingly smaller as they go up to create rhythm/movement and in order to lead into the top square. I did this because I needed to somehow move the audience’s attention into the top square, but I didn’t want to make it too obvious, so I used the movement created by the arrow patterns to guide the audience’s eyes. Since the last 2 squares I drew were very dark due to how close the patterns were to each other, I decided to make the top 2 squares more white by using less patterns that were more spaced apart. I really didn’t have a plan for those last 2 squares, but I decided to keep one side containing geometric shapes and one side containing organic shapes. This time though, the organic shapes and geometric shapes were supposed to be on both sides of the squares because it kind of represented how these 2 squares were more “in the middle” like how the values of these 2 squares were supposed to be more “in the middle” of dark blue and white. These 2 squares however didn’t really have a concept behind them, I just looked around at some other people’s artwork and got inspired by what I thought was cool (like I thought Hiram’s city concept was cool, because he used all types of different values and it was cool to see how he added patterns into the drawing, so I also drew some buildings, and then added patterns in wherever I wanted). Most of the patterns I used in these last 2 squares were repeats of patterns I had already used in previous squares in order to try and add harmony to the piece as a whole. I wanted to audience to see elements different squares being used all over the piece, not just in that square.
When I started this pattern design, my concept for the coaster was clear cut. I thought this square had to be geometric, this square had to be organic, they have to have different patterns to emphasis the contrast in the squares, they have to be either dark blue or white. However, as I went on, I discovered that you can use the same patterns and still have it look cool, and it’s not always “black and white,” there are grey areas, there are repeating patterns, and that’s okay.
