FMP

COLOR

            The meaning of colors can vary depending on culture and circumstances. Each color has many aspects to it but you can easily learn the language of color by understanding a few simple concepts. Color is a form of non verbal communication. It is not a static energy and its meaning can change from one day to the next with any individual. For example, a person may choose to wear the red one day and this may indicate they are ready to take action, or they may be passionate about what they are going to be doing that day, or again it may mean that they are feeling angry that day, on either a conscious or subconscious level. Orange is the color of social communication and optimism. From a negative color meaning it is also a sign of pessimism and superficiality. 
              In the meanings of color in color psychology, yellow is the color of the mind and the intellect. It is optimistic and cheerful. However it can also suggest impatience, criticism and cowardice. Green is the color of balance and growth. It can mean both self-reliance as a positive and possessiveness as a negative, among many other meanings. Blue is the color of trust and peace. It can suggest loyalty and integrity as well as conservatism and frigidity. Indigo is the color of intuition. In the meanings of colors it can mean idealism and structure as well as ritualistic and addictive.  Purple is the color of the imagination. It can be creative and individual or immature and impractical.  The color meaning of turquoise is communication and clarity of mind. It can also be impractical and idealistic. The color psychology of pink is unconditional love and nurturing. Pink can also be immature, silly and girlish. In the meaning of colors, magenta is a color of universal harmony and emotional balance. It is spiritual yet practical, encouraging common sense and a balanced outlook on life. The color brown is a serious, down-to-earth color that relates to security, protection and material wealth. From a color psychology perspective, gray is the color of compromise - being neither black nor white, it is the transition between two non-colors. Silver has a feminine energy; it is related to the moon and the ebb and flow of the tides - it is fluid, emotional, sensitive and mysterious. Gold is the color of success, achievement and triumph. Associated with abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance, the color psychology of gold implies affluence, material wealth and extravagance. White is color at its most complete and pure, the color of perfection. The color meaning of white is purity, innocence, wholeness and completion. Black is the color of the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, creating an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world.

            

             Though I'm sure some art-history buffs are likely to say otherwise, from everything I've read about expresionism it seems the individual artists now labeled as Expressionists largely made it up as they went along, following their instincts as to what color to use, when and where. The 'breakthrough' was that color didn't have to be realistic. While reference is made to colors having symbolic value, again it seems to me that this symbolism was largely determined by individual artists, and not governed by a rigid set of pre-existing rules.

            Matise believed "the invention of photography had released painting from the need to copy nature", leaving him free to "present emotion as directly as possible and by the simplest means".

            Van Gogh tried to explain to his brother, Theo: "Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, in order to express myself forcibly. ... I should like to paint the portrait of an artist friend, a man who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because it is his nature. He'll be a blond man. I want to put my appreciation, the love I have for him into the picture. So I paint him as he is, as faithfully as I can, to begin with. But the picture is not yet finished. To finish it I am now going to be the arbitrary colorist. I exaggerate the fairness of the hair, I even get to orange tones, chromes and pale citron-yellow."

            Kandinsky is widely quoted as saying: "The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colors on its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation". Kandinsky was a synaesthesiac, which would have given him an insight into colors that most people don't. (With synaesthesia you don't just see color, but experience it with your other senses too, such as experiencing colors as sounds or seeing sounds as color.) 3rd of March I visited the exhibition of Paul Klee "EY" in Tate modern. Where are some artworks which impressed me:

 

 

            The main idea of exhibition was the periods of life and the changing of the Klee artworks. He been living in Germany and teaching in Bauhaus, but he had to move because of  the war in 1930. When he left a Bauhaus his drawing style really changed into a painting of dots. Later he did fall sick and his painting changed as well.

             The most impressive thing I saw in exhibition was the new drawing technique which Klee was using in his artworks. It calls continuous lines drawing and oil transfer technique. Continuous line drawing is when the artist draws the subject without ever lifting their drawing instrument of the paper. Its a common drawing exercise for artists as it trains the eye and hand to work as a team, and it helps the artist to see all details of the object. This is the link how to do it by yourself: Continuous line drawing by P.Klee Anyway I been happy about the exhibition and the things I saw, but it wasn't that informative for my FMP as I am researching about the color at the moment. I found some new things to try in my own drawing studies.

Branding and the color:

            I have an idea to make a webpage for a final project for that I will need a logo and the main color, probably I would use something lilac for that. I never been thinking about those colors have something in common. Very interesting how the brands are split up by the categories.

Holi - Festival of Color

            The special feature is that the people paint themselves with various colours and throw colourful powder in the air to express the freedom and to colour their everyday life. The most important thing is, that on this day all castes of the indian caste-system are nullified and put out of force. On this day of celebration all people are supposed to be equal! This is where the idea to bring this festival to the rest of the world come from. 

19th of March I visited Liverpool street where the festival been taking place:

Self evaluation: I discovered colour in fine art, films, branding and decided to explore more about colour in websites. I studied web designing and colour. Later I tried a few web templates to make my own website. When I figure out how to set up your own web hosting and to buy your domain name. I spent a lot of time to work with coding and web making software. The hardest thing was to manage the software to work with, like Expression Web 4 to creating a website. Later I moved to designing a website template, creating the sections of body and setting up their place in a webpage. I continued to deal with colours and images, background and type. I made some experiments which colour would suite the most the website about healthy lifestyle.

WebSite Design

I decided to create a webpage for my colleague as a nutrition consultant. Where are some webpages of healthy lifestyle and nutrition which already exists:

            The colours mostly used on these kind of webpages are bright. It think my page suppose to have green purple and white as a main colours. I started from the logo which is WellnessBoutique.co.uk

Burn a sock

            Where are few screen shoots of a video we made on a collaboration week. We wanted to make an installation on 4 walls in a room, but we end up with double video on one wall.

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CODING

I started to learn how to work with Microsoft Expression Web 4. Where are really good free tutorial online: Tutorail by Thimothy Kywn. teaches you the basic code structure for HTML, shows how different parts of webpage works, how to run the CSS. Hope to creat a great website after finishing this tutorial. 

Creating an approximate Website in Wix .com 

Webdesign on Expression Web 4 for WellnessBoutique.co.uk
Creating dynamic web template

Experimenting with webdesign

Experimenting on already created web template

Creating a background images and trying them on a dwt

 

 

 

Creating logo

Experimenting with logo background in webpage

Photo shoot for background images

Self evaluation: I finished the website and exported it from expression web 4. It took some time to get it life, because I had a little problem with my web hosting company and software I been using to make it. As a presentation for my website I did choose to make a screen shoot and record a voice of the owner of the page. As I consulted with my tutor I been asked to make a video with Rimante (the website id created for her) presenting her page. It changed my plans, because I had to make speech for her and set up the space for shooting. The biggest problem I had was a voice and recording quality, was really hard to make a good quality record without wind or background noise as we were shooting outside. I wanted to use a sunny day for presentation as it is health and beauty website.

Presentation of Website

Final Web Design

Getting life!

Self evaluation: I made the website of healthy lifestyle and diet. It is created for my friend who is nutritionist and health consultant. She is finishing her degree this year and wants to set up her own business. I had to make a final project and I wanted it to be useful. So she was my first customer who needed a personal website. I discussed what kind of website she wants, what information she would like to add. She gave me the information and I started to make website.

I started from free website online, just added some colours, types and backgrounds to see how it will look like. When I figure out that it is not the way I want to create a website. I want to create my own designed website by using code. So I started to watch tutorials and read books about how to create a website from the beginning. Timothy Kwyn lessons online and book “The missing manual” by Matthew McDonalds were very helpful. After I got a software (Microsoft Expression 4) to work with I started to build my website from the basics.

I created main body and head sections, added style sheets and created my own dynamic web template. To decide which colours to use in this website I studied about web design and been comparing an existing websites online. I knew it was healthy life website, so colours suppose to be bright. I might will use green as a health symbol and purple as a beauty symbol. I did some experimentation about it and moved on with type and font. Also I created my own images using Photoshop. I made brand and symbol for wellness boutique website. It was a heart with apple leaf (heath+beauty).

When I finished my designing I got the website life by setting up my web hosting account and domain name. It took a little bit of time from me, because I wasn’t familiar with web hosting and web hosting packages. Also how to upload files and folders that they will be shown correctly online. As I did that I moved to the next task: how to present the website. I made a video which consists of the screenshots from website and Rimante presenting the site. So I made website and a video as well.

I learned how to work with html and new software such as: Microsoft Expression Web4, Audacity, CamStudio10, SonyVegasPro10 and others. I had many new things to try, many problems to face while working with new stuff. I think my FMP will continue even after the course as I am going to update information and add some new pages and information.

While I was working with colours and designs of the website I checked hundreds of websites about healthy lifestyle and diet. I find out that I am really interested in this area. My new idea is drawing a website – navigate all the buttons of sub pages on the drawing. It will be based on the theme of website. This is my next step into the web design after I am going to finish my foundation course.