The Ask:
Personal projects outside of the everyday grind of work or school are important since they give us a different way to use our creativity. They give us a chance to break the circle of creating a certain way and maybe even give us inspiration to use in our work or school!
I was asked brainstorm at least 10 ideas for a personal project and pick “The One” to elaborate on and outline.
Let’s start with the brainstorm…
This is the list I wrote on a Post-It note which I think I unfortunately threw away prematurely so I’ll have to be content with this less personal version from Google Docs:
Ideas:
- Drawing a class group “photo” memento
- Photoshoot in the fine arts studio, maybe of people painted to look like statues, placed around the space.
- Clay life-size bust sculpture
- Comic of funny moments from school
- Learning some kind of dance with others in a dance studio
- Photoshoot at a skating rink
- Self portrait series in different locations from home to public spaces to out in nature
- Painting a mural/street art
- Learning to make latte art/foam characters
- Shooting 5 self portraits with 5 different types of cameras (e.g, polaroid, point and shoot, film, etc) Maybe they could be composed the same but each camera would give them a totally unique look.
- Stop motion video of little bots throwing out data from photos in little pixels, then they haphazardly put their own interpretations back in. (like how jpegs compress images and fill it in with larger pixels/interpretations)
- Series of cloud photos with the shapes I see brought to life for others through tracing/making into art
- Atompunk themed photoshoot/dystopian or lost space traveler
But which one is “The One?”
I really like the ideas that didn’t have so much to do with photography or videography since sometimes I get the most inspiration from things that aren’t related to Visual Media. It would also give me a chance to make a switch from one medium to another – I love Visual Media but I was an artist with pencils, clay, and paint before I was one with a camera and I haven’t had as much time to put towards that side of myself.
That said, I think it would be really sweet to do a portrait of my classmates as a little memento of this time with them – growing up, my favorite gift to give my family were personalized birthday cards where I would draw the birthday person celebrating with the rest of my family – there’s something special to me about drawing the people close to me and my classmates have been such amazing support over the past months we’ve spent together – the fact I didn’t know any of them just 5 or so months ago is so strange and so cool to think about!
The skills I hope to gain is improving my skills in drawing new faces and a lot of different people and poses on one piece of paper – I haven’t drawn much in a hot minute and drawing semi-realistic pictures of people which look like them without being too realistic, which is kind of my style, can be a little tricky but always fun.
(and, it just sounds fun XD )
Visual Proof of Concept piece (Sounds very professional and serious doesn’t it?)
Doesn’t it look just like us? Who knew there was a faceless class on the mysterious Fifth Floor? I’m just kidding, I did make sure there’s 15 though (I hope I got that number right) – I just drew a general concept of what it might look like, keeping in mind each person would have something that represents them (maybe an object or their expression or clothing style) And body types that actually matched up rather than my default person sketch type XD.
But will I actually do this?
I almost didn’t pick this as my “The One” since usually once I share my intentions to do something I end up not doing it since I feel (even if it’s not true) that there’s an outside expectation placed on it which can take away from the fun of just creating (another symptom of perfectionism I’m working through hehe…) Also, it’s doubtful I’ll have the time to do this while school’s in session – if I do though, I actually might give this a go!
