Homework 13.1. Roll the Dice: Final Project Preliminary Thoughts

I recently moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, from the Upper East Side, and my commute to school has increased from about thirty to forty minutes on the bus to around an hour on the subway each way. I found myself unsettlingly idle during this newfound chunk of time each day, and wasn't sure what I should do with it. I tend to complete readings and assignments for school on my computer, which is not conducive to the setup of a subway ride. I don't have time or (let's be honest) mental energy to spend time reading for pleasure, which I'm sure is what I once would have done. I tried to learn Mandarin with an app, but found that the service underground was too poor to really participate with the program. I found the same to be true of Instagram, as hard as I tried to continue to scroll through my feed. For a while I resorted to playing arbitrary and remarkably pointless games on my phone, but this felt arbitrary and remarkably pointless. I felt like I was trapped in a waste of time. 

I am also taking a figure drawing class, and have been wanting to improve my drawing skill, especially as it relates to people, and capturing a likeness. As I sat on the subway during one of these idle trips over the last few weeks, I realized that I had a sharpie pen in my pocket and a small notebook; almost unthinkingly, I started to sketch the people around me. It became my goal to really capture the essence of the people that I drew, a game that I play with myself during each commute. Pick a person; jot them down. If they get up and leave the train, the drawing is over; only draw who is in front of you. I have become absolutely obsessed with this little drawing game of mine, so much so that I've now nearly filled the notebook that I began drawing in on that first random day. 

The dice that I rolled that would dictate the direction of this project landed on "Graphic/Fashion Design," "Digital Drawing & Painting," and "Mapping." The "mapping" element immediately reminded me of the subway drawings that I've been doing, and lead me to think of ways that I could incorporate either these drawings or this idea into my final piece, in line with the other three die that I had cast. Because my I also cast "digital drawing and painting" I think I would like to take the existing drawings that I have and somehow translate them digitally, either in Photoshop or Illustrator or another program that would allow for this. I think that I could then superimpose them onto a subway map of New York City, and create a sort of digital map of faces. I think that the creation of this digital map could also include a graphic design element as well, especially as it relates to text and the way that each of these various elements are combined digitally. I think that I would prefer to create a piece that relates more to graphic design than fashion design. 

There are other things that I need to consider; how to translate these pieces digitally so that they ring true, which map I should focus on, how I should treat the placement or superimposition of these drawings that I have come to love so much. But I feel like the idea is there, and I am excited about it. Finally, I feel like I am no longer trapped in wasted time. Consider leaving everything digital and creating a map/website in dreamweaver.