James Jean Presentation

For my Art Ed. class we have to give a presentation on a contemporary artist. For mine. I chose the painter/illustrator James Jean. I really love his work. His color choices, surrealist subjects, attention to detail and overall style really grab the eye and command attention. Jean has a totally unique way of approaching his subject matter and I find his work really inspiring. His website is www.jamesjean.com and his blog is www.processrecess.com. His blog is really great; Jean posts the stages of his art from thumbnail to final piece. It also goes back several years into his portfolio.

Well anyway here is the layout I made as a guide for my presentation board. The board is one of those that has three panels and stands up on its own. I also made a design for the back of the board, but I won't be using it because of the cost of printing the images large enough to fit the board.

This is the front of the display board that I will be using.

This is the design for the back that I won't be able to use. I thought it looked pretty cool though.

That's all for now

- Later

Bunny Card Done!!

I finally finished the bunny card!! All that is left is a test print and then uploading both sides to overnightprints.com! Here is the final:

Side one with party info- I removed the address and phone # for privacy reasons.

Side two- Photos are arranged with the earliest at the top and the most recent at the bottom. The big one is the newest of the pics.

-Later

Bunny Card Update

I haven't had too much time to work on the bunny card, but here is where I am now. I have them drawn up in illustrator, but I'll be adding and tweaking them still... like adding detail to the crowns, etc. Once I got the card mocked up, I tried putting random photos onto it, but the higher contrast of the photos with the flat bunnies didn't flow well, so my sister and I decided to make the bunny portion go on one side of the card with the party information and the photos go on the other side, in case anyone wanted to just frame the photos. I think that will work a lot better, but I haven't had a chance to go that far yet.

Here is a detail of the bunnies, so far. I'll be taking them and putting them on the redesigned-double sided card. They still need some more detail and I'll probably try to give them higher contrast or shading to help them pop out more.

Here is the first mock-up I was trying out. The high contrast photos just didn't work with the flat bunnies, so this version will be scrapped and on the new one this side will be all photos and the other will have the bunnies and party info. The orientation will still be horizontal. The text would have gone over the the big crown in the middle.

-Just a note: these aren't the photos that will be in the final, they were just put in to give me an idea of how it would look.

State Fair of VA

I went to the State Fair yesterday at the new location by Kings Dominion. First off, traffic was HORRIBLE!!! It was bumper to bumper traffic from the I95 in Ashland until we parked. One of the main hold ups was that they stopped incoming traffic to allow outgoing traffic out. They need to solve that problem, with a fly-over or something. Also now they charge $5 for parking when it used to be free at the old location, they must have made a fortune- there were more cars there than I could count. Once we got parked and tried to enter, we didn't know where to go. There were no signs telling which way to go, and the new location is HUGE, its hard to find your way around on the first trip. We ended up just following people and at one point we got directions from a police officer. They had shuttles, but there were no where near enough to handle the amount of people, it was quicker to walk than wait in line for a shuttle.

Once we got into the fair grounds it was much better. We had bought tickets online, so we bypassed ticket lines. We got a map as soon as we got in and that helped a lot. We ended up going through two tunnels that ran under the road to get to the fair- parking was on one side of the road, the fair was on the other, and the tunnels connected them. The tunnels were kind of cool. The fair itself was the same as always, great food, games, rides, the animal area, etc were all there. They were just more spaced out. The amount of people there was unreal, I don't remember the old location at RIR having anywhere near that amount of people. It seemed like triple or more of the amount of people at RIR. Even though the attractions were a little more spaced out, it was still crowded with the amount of visitors. It felt like it would be easy to get separated from your group, cell phones were a must. One cool thing there, is a gorgeous old brick mansion up on a hill before the fair splits from the entertainment area to the farm animal area. That place was awesome, if your there it is definitely worth a look.

When we left traffic was still bad, but we managed to get out a little quicker than when we got there.

Overall the fair itself was great, but the traffic and parking situation was AWFUL. I hope they can work out the kinks with parking for next year. I also think it will be better to take a day off during the week and go during the day. That could help avoid traffic and maybe some of the crowds.

Here is an overview of the new location, there is more parking to the right of the map that is not shown and that was where we had to park.

Here is a detail of the attractions- there was a lot to see!!