Ever since I started calligraphy in 2019, the desire to go back to school for art started to grow little by little. I've fulfilled that desire for the last few years with the plethora of calligraphy and art classes on Zoom. Starting this fall semester, I enrolled in a couple of art classes at my local community college. I was surprised at how affordable community college is compared to a university. It's great to be back in school and studying something I'm passionate about at a fraction of the cost. Education should be easy access and affordable. For this, I am thankful to California.
Drawing Fundamentals is surprisingly very fun and I'm enjoying touching on one specific topic each week. The first week was about proportion and perspective while the second week we focused on shadows. I feel like a lot of my questions related to drawing are getting answered in class.
Two-Dimensional Design I is the second class I'm in. This class has a lot of work. I am constantly doing something for the class every day, whether that's a reading assignment, homework, or partaking in discussion boards. I wish I switched to a Fine Arts major when I was in undergrad at USC (2002-2006). Back then, I think their Design department was not so established. I loved letters and there was only one, maybe two, typography classes. There was no such thing as lettering at school although I remember hand drawing some logos for a final project in a design class. To be honest, I was also young and inexperienced to officially "declare a major" and sign my life away.
I hadn't touched lettering or design for over a decade. I had taken a few art classes like watercolor here and there but they were all short escapes while I worked as a tax analyst in my past life.
I'm grateful for this period where I get to be back at school taking up fun art classes. I think ultimately, I want to be comfortable with sketching, and I want to improve my eye for good design. In turn, I'd like to strengthen my calligraphy, and dive a little deeper with bookmaking and other personal projects.
Here is one of the compositions I made for our second week's homework in Two-Dimensional Design. We submitted three each and I thought this one was my strongest one. We used source images, increased/decreased them in size and traced the images. It was to show the different layers of foreground, middle ground, and background. Do you see the dolphins in the tea cup?
