Week 2: Surface Design/ Mosaic

 I have once again sadly left this assignment until later in the hopes that my new used laptop would appear and I would not have to hijack my roommates computer again to run Rhino. The current status is that it will appear sometime between today (though unlikely as it is currently in Ontario) and Friday, so hopefully this is the last time that I will be doing this.

I took my inspiration from three places. The first two were from a book I own, Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns by Mike Perry.

This floral is from Brie Harrison. I like how it is abstracted yet recognizable.

This one is from Maxwell Paternoster. I like the fact that is has depth despite being just black and white, and also how the images are somewhat familiar yet places in a different way than usual

The next three images that I have are from another book that I own, Hell Ladies, which is a collection of artist Junko Mizuno's earlier works. She is a Japanese artist who's style can be described as kawaii-grotesque.

Photography is my weakness, I tried here.

I especially think that the bottom left of this image would be interesting to work with. Not necessarily the girl, but the flowers/blueberries? and the flames on the side of the bathtub.

This image is not blurry because of me!  In some sections of the book the images are soft and blurry like this. I think where the waves and the hair meet is very interesting visually because of textures.

The rest of the images of patterns below came from a funny source. There was a pile of wallpaper samples left outside the backdoor in the alley behind my place of work downtown. When my shift was over they were still there so I took them because I hoard pretty things for crafts.

A play on a classic cloud motif, could be interesting in layers

Once again, simple abstracted florals only this time more of a focus on the negative space

This one I am most attracted to the top of the paper away from the dragon, with the abstract shapes, eyes, and rainbow/cloud type images.

This one I am less into overall, however I do really like the section where the plants and clouds meet on the mid-left side.

I wound up cutting the bottom left of the Junko Mizuno and Pasting that into Rhino to work with. I know my picture taking is not optimal but I am going to see what happens.

Somehow after inserting the image and changing the transparency, I was able to hit the lock button the the image stopped moving. I have no idea why it worked this time as I feel like it wasn't working last time, but I'm not going to complain.

I paused and rewatched the tutorial video and now I am thinking that possibly I have picked something too complicated. However, that is kind of my thing.

I made some circles over part of the bottom flower, and then put an offset circle in with the thoughts that I could array dots or cutouts for the dots near the edges of the flowers.

I then tried using the curve interpolate points, but even though it might not've been as accurate I think I like using the control point curve better just to give a smoother line. I trimmed the overlap and then joined them into one object (or I guess two objects because it's both the outside and inside edges.)

I copied the inside offset shape then offset another inside of it even smaller. I then put some lines through it and cut it so that I would just have the line for the inside where the dots would be on the flower on the image. I arrayed those up good but then when I went to use the hatch command to color them in somehow I accidentally got some of the negative space.

I figured it out, but now I am concerned that the lines are not attached and that this will get me in trouble later.

I am seeing a little circle in the bottom of my shape and I am not sure why. I have tried to trim it but it does not seem to let me?

After much messing with arrays and trimming and doing the zooming in computer equivalent of crawling on my hands and knees through this flower shape to trim extra bits I now have the outline of the flower done with the little petal circle things.

Finally, after what seems like 8 million years, I have the anatomy of...one flower petal.

However, when I tried to change the layers of the cut objects, all the parts of the objects did not move, so I'll have to fight with them to get them to move.  Especially one curve on the outline of the outline of the petal. it just does not want to join at all. 

The fact that I have been here forever and it still will not let me join these curves is absolutely insane.

I decided to just stop wasting my time messing around with that and start on the next flower petal or I'd be here forever. I thought it would be easy peasy after the first but my circles that I wanted to array along the curve wanted to go on the inside all crazy! Moving the circle to the very end of the curve helped however,

Overall the second flower went faster than the first.

After awhile I now have all sorts of flower and berry bits and bobs. Not really sure what to do with them.

I've organized my little bits up at the top somewhat because it was becoming unruly. I'm on the last berry and I've developed a system, working from the outside in to make them.

I started to work on a leaf, but then I decided maybe I had already gone to hard and I needed to take a break. I'm sure this will be handy for the assignment but I think It's probably way overkill for this week.

I'm making new layers and combining the images that I've created. I'm hoping that I can mirror/ rotate them interestingly.

I've noticed that I can't seem to automatically snap things into place that should fit together perfectly, like hatches to outlines, and I have to just zoom in and do it manually... I feel like there must be another way.

Anyways, I mirrored the image a bunch and then made a different layer with a green square that I hatched with a green gradient. It looks a bit silly with just the flowers and berries and I think it would seem much more complete with the leaves and the flame added on! However, I think I have put sufficient effort into this for this week. I would like to try having more elements and arranging them differently in more layers, but I think that is a job for next week.