anika mari

In the time that I’ve been in Mexico, I have realized that there are at least 4 different types of graffiti or wall art in Mexico City: Sanctioned advertisements on rented walls, traditional style graffiti art utilizing color, shading, depth and skill, stencil style graffiti, and regular scribbled tags of symbols that mean something to drug dealers and gangs. I find the different types of graffiti that decorate the city interesting from an artistic perspective, but I understand that a lot of people really detest it because the walls of houses are constantly tagged with the drug-dealer/gang variety of graffiti. In that respect I can understand why most people don’t really take a look at any kind of graffiti, and instead consider it all vandalism, or at least and eyesore.

But for me, I find it interesting. I haven’t spent a lot of time documenting it, but when ever I see it in the city, it does catch my eye, and I give it a moment of my time and attention. This happened one day when I was driving back to the city from Cuernavaca. Traffic was slow because a truck carrying tile had lost it’s load. We crept by a village that had a wall to between it and the highway, presumably to keep down the road noise. Like on many plain surfaces in the city and surrounding pueblos, they don’t stay that way, and this wall was no exception. It was covered with many styles of graffiti. There was one small part of one tag that particularly caught my eye. The shape of it was so organic and somehow sophisticated. Since we were driving slow, I snatched out my sketch book, and started to draw. I came up with a little motif that was totally different from the shape I’d seen that had inspired me, but I kept going with it.

When I got home, I started a series of patterns based on the shape I’d come up with. The first one I completed within a day:

The colors were easy to choose, and I like the combination, but somehow I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the overall result. I was more intrigued by the negative space (the dark blue shapes) than with the green shapes that were intended to be the focal point of the pattern.

I decided to try out a different pattern based on the shape of negative space from the first pattern:

I love the color combination of the Mulberry and Poppy Red Prismacolors. I think this pattern is an example of not knowing when to stop. The blue and the black areas that I filled in are unnecessary and really distract from the bold color combination of the mulberry and poppy red that would really be stunning on its own. I would have been better off leaving the blue and black areas as white space.

Overall I was pretty happy with the result of the last pattern, even if it wasn’t entirely perfect. But the first green and blue pattern I’d completed still bugged me. I wasn’t sure what needed to change, but I had an idea to smooth out the lines, making the shape a bit more simple, so I did this pattern next:

This time I filled in the negative areas with the new simplified motif, making the pattern a little more rapid and repetitive. I was happier with this result, but I still felt like I was missing something. It just kind of gently nagged at me for a few days until one day after my language class. It had be a long class, and I was really tired when I got home. I lay down, fully intending to rest for 20 minutes. My mind was wondering in no particular direction when an idea suddenly popped into my head. What about 8 points in the shape instead of four? I jumped right up, and sketched a bit, quickly working out the new motif. I worked determinedly, but it still took me more than a day to finish this pattern:

I liked the combination of the yellow with the blues, but I wanted to try out a couple of other color combinations, so I switched it up a bit at the bottom of the pattern.  When I was finished, I had the blue stars finished and the negative spaces colored in with yellow, pink and blue, but it still seemed to be missing something.  I added the small dots at the intersections of the lines of the grid paper with a light gray Stabilo pen.  Finally I felt satisfied with the pattern that graffiti had inspired, and so I was free to move onto the next idea if and when it would hit me.

I’ve been working a lot with patterns and texture, but I’ve also been drawing a lot of little “creatures” lately. They are purely from my imagination, and purely drawn for fun. A lot of them seem to resemble sea creatures, or a cross between flowers/plants and sea creatures.

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This first image I did while I was still back in the States. I’m working on another “scene” with many little creatures while I’m here in Mexico, but I’m not quite done with it. This one’s drawn on paper with a Pigma Micron pen. Not exactly sure which width I used for this one, but if I had to guess I’d say a 03 size.

The black and white drawing on the bottom I did with a 02 size Pigma Micron pen that was partially dried out. It took a long long time, but I’m please with how the textures and patterns turned out.I used a dark green Stabilo Point 88 pen for the main part of the drawing of the sea urchin at the top of the image. I accented the dark green with a Rhodamine Prisma Color Marker, and dark mulberry Stabilo Point 88 pen. This one also took a long time, but I’m only semi-pleased with the results. Some of the shapes/textures/patterns have potential, but I think the affect was muddied, particularly at the top of the form. I do like the texture and feeling of the stripes with the dots toward the bottom, but the detail and overall effect is quickly lost toward the top.

I like to think of this as a kind of sea flower. A lot of the details remind me of part of little sea creatures that I’ve seen over the years, but also it’s very reminiscent of a blossom. I like the feeling this drawing conjures. It’s detailed and delicate, yet somehow it looks a little dangerous, like you could get pricked or like you hand could get sucked into the mouth. This drawing was also done with a Pigma Micron pen, 02 in size, but didn’t take too terrible long. When I started the drawing I had something very different in mind. I began with the circular shape and the rounded “petals” that circle the outside, but I thought it would turn into more of a medallion than a blossom shape. The rest just kind of took shape as I drew, as often happens, and this is what I ended up with. I added the little spikes that stick out at the end, which really finished the piece.

For Graphic Design there are 2 things you need: purpose and tools.

There can be many purposes including, but not at all limited to: expression of an idea, better sales for a company, a strong identity, providing information, lending context to images or to a project, directing thoughts or actions, and organizing content.

Tools are many and varied, also including but not limited to: color, pattern, movement, layout, concept, sketching, ideas, photography, text, grids, planning, research, movement, hierarchy, talent, creativity, inspiration, repetition, balance and texture.

So for the specific poster, I chose from each category.
Purpose: to provide context
Tools: text and texture

The next layer is that I chose photos with different textures to illustrate one of the tools, texture. The word “contexture” reminded me of the “before & after” category on wheel of fortune, which inspired the type treatment, or text of the poster.

As yet, I have not provided the context. I purposefully kept it off the actual poster to prove the point that without context it’s just a pretty picture or design, but not successful in delivering the message, or fulfilling the goal that might exist.

So the the context:
I chose textures from images that I have taken both in the Baltimore/MD/DC area, and also in Mexico City where I am currently living. About half are photos I took while living in MD and about half are taken here in Mexico, but without that information, one would likely not realize that as the case. Without context, any of the photos could be from either location.

When you boil it down, there are always the same visual elements in any environment, though perhaps they are arranged quite differently, providing the context for the specific place/city where you find them. Textures and patterns and words are arranged in a uniquely Mexican way. When I walk out the door, I know I’m in Mexico City. The letters on signs are arranged into Spanish words, walls are brightly colored in every hue you can imagine, traffic is crammed bumper to bumper in the narrow lanes, bright green VW Beetle taxis swarm the streets. Cement mixers are decorated with highly colorful, stylized snakes and flowers. In Maryland there is space; lots of space and trees and nature, and cars speed down country roads. In Baltimore City, there are fewer trees than the countryside, but there aren’t as many people bustling to and fro as in Mexico. Traffic might be tight, but not crammed. Signs are in English, colors are more subdued. Cement mixers are gray or silver or white, or some other reasonable solid shade.

In each different environment, there are visual cues that make them unique, but if one looks closer, and closer, and closer still, the similarities can stand out among the differences.

This was my very first gocco print!  I used the ink blocking material to print the eyes and the body at the same time.

I printed a total of eight.  Four on yellow paper, four on blue.

I drew the image with the pen that came with the gocco machine, and although it works well to burn the screen, I didn’t love the feel of drawing with it.  It ate up the paper and left little bits of it behind, like the the markers I used when I was little.  I hear micron pens work great, which is awesome for me since I use them all the time.  I’ll be using those for the next print I make.

It was a whole lot of fun, and I look forward to doing more.

I drew this pattern in illustrator from a sketch I did. I printed it out (I tiled it because it was bigger than 8.5×11) then taped the print out onto a nice piece of paper with double sided tape.

The double sided tape said that it was “removable” but, it still ended up tearing up the surface of the paper. Next time I’ll make the tape less sticky by sticking it down on my skin, like the inside of my arm (I’m sure it sounds weird, but it works to make any tape less tacky, but still sticky enough to stick to most surfaces) and pulling it back up before sticking it to the good paper. Also, I’ll tape it a little further away from the edge of the image area, so that I could just crop it out if need be.

Once the printout was taped to the good paper, it was just a lot of patience and an xacto knife, cutting around the edges of each part of the pattern.

I changed blades halfway through and a new blade made all the difference (I think the one I started with was already a bit dull); I would start with a new blade at the beginning when I do it again.

Probably not practical if you wanted a lot of multiples of the same thing, but if you need a lot of them, you can do really detailed cutouts with laser cutting–it’s weird because it kind of burns the back of the piece of paper, but the detail far exceeds what you can do with die-cutting.