Creating A Book; My Chosen Photographer

James Nachtwey is the photographer I chose for this project. Check out his portfolio!

http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

Summary of Vessel Project

This project was such a great experience.  I have learned so much; from different types of wood, how to use saws, rowders, and sanders.  There were so many techniques that I would have never thought of without the help of the wood shop teachers.  I thought that this project was going to be much more difficult than it ended up being, but in the end I thought it was very enjoyable.  In fact, I plan to make more boxes this summer for family and friends.  My strengths of this project were the gluing and carving.  I thought that the overall glued wood structure was very successful.  I also thought that the carving that I did on the top of my box was pretty good for never had doing it before.  My weaknesses for this project was the cutting.  Cutting was something that made me pretty nervous actually.  I was worried about cutting my fingers off, and I was also always thinking that I was making the right cut at the right time.  One wrong cut can call for a whole new box.  If I were to do anything differently I would maybe experiment more with the overall shape of the box.  But because of the my chosen object, I think the shape I chose was appropriate.  However, in my next box, I would like to make some funky boxes that are visually interesting.

Final Box

Water Color Painting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g857UNIKQsM

Some Cool Photos

Wall Art

Summary of Designing and Constructing in 3-D

This project was focused around thinking, problem solving, and constructing in the third dimension.   Exploring new ideas, and building prototypes was necessary.  Failure, was also a large part of this project.  I would assume there were hundreds of prototypes build for this project, and I would also assume that a large percentage of them ended up not working for some reason or another.  The project started by constructing a chair out of a 4x4 sheet of corrugated cardboard and not cutting away any of the material or using any fasteners.  And then creating another chair with unlimited amount of cardboard, and still no fasteners, this project had a lot of different facets that required problem solving skills, and a large amount of patience.  Once all chairs were constructed, perspective drawing came into play.  Perspective drawings opens the eyes of all artists.  It brings sense to a simple sketch, and allows for the mind to understand what is going on in the foreground and to show distance.  These sketches were a great addition to this project.  Another option, instead of drawing in perspective was to use the Google SketchUp program.  This is a three dimensional program that allows users to building rooms, and their chairs on the computer.  I thought this program was a great experience.  There was so much to learn, and it was something new that I had never used, so the program was very captivating to an artist.

There were many difficulties in this project as well.  At first, formulating a plan for a 4x4 sheet of cardboard was very challenging.  I had no idea where to start, and I thought I would never come up with a chair that could hold a person.  With a lot of sketching, mini models, and wrongly cut cardboard, a cardboard chair emerged from that plain sheet of cardboard.  It was a truly enlightening experience once that first chair was done, it felt so good to have created something from just a simple sheet of cardboard.  Another difficulty I faced personally, was the freedom of the second portion of the project.  With an open rule book on the second part, I was almost overwhelmed, and was even more lost than the first project.  I grew very frustrated when I was not able to put to cardboard every idea I had floating around in my mind.  Which I feel is a problem I face often when I am under pressure of creating a quality project. 

In the end, there are quite a few things I would do differently.  Especially with my final chair.  I know in my head I have much better ideas than the one I ended up constructing.  It was just very challenging to make it happen in real life.  I think if  I could change anything it would be just the final chair.  If I had more time, money, and patience, I would create a whole new chair that I would be more satisfied with, however I do not really have any of those things.  But overall, I am very pleased with this project and everything that we all went through.  I have learned a lot from the process, and the guest speakers at lectures we had regarding the project.