Day 1: Josey

Today was our first day of J-term and I was very excited to start working on my diorama and shadowboxes. Each year I remember seeing the projects of people who have taken this course and being very impressed by the intricate projects that were being created. We started off the day going over briefly what we would be doing including what a diorama and shadowbox are. Then we got straight to work with designing our projects.

I had been trying to look for any inspiration over winter break, so I had a few ideas to start working off of. Eventually I ended up with one design for the diorama, consisting of a nature scene in Alaska. It has elements of nature with mountains, bears and trees, but also more man made elements including a float plane and a cabin. I love Alaska and thie National Park we visited was amazing with all of the wildlife so close by, so the memory of this specific scene has stuck in very vivid in my head. Because of this I was able to create my draing fairly quickly and get to work actually designing it. 

Sketch of what I wanted my diorama to be

Work I started doing in Adobe Illustrator (each box is a different layer)

For my shadowbox I had more difficulty coming up with ideas. When I was brainstorming over the break I saw several shadowboxes with a night sky with star cut outs, and I thought the way the light shown through the stars was very mesmerizing and I new I wanted to incorporate this into my design. Because of this I was able to start with a basic sky, then added a moon to go along with the theme. Because my other design was nature themed I went with an urban designed, and tried to replicate the Houston skyline. My original idea for the bottom half of the design was going to be a field with animals including horses and coyotes, but I decided that wouldn’t end up looking like I envisioned it would. So I moved on to idea two which had a bayou and a reflection of the buildings into the water. This also added some people walking along the trails, but then I realized that didn’t really go with the nighttime theme.

Eventually I settled on a pond with the reflection of the skyline, with two dogs looking into the water. In my previous two designs I had wanted to have my dogs running in a field, but since that didn't work out I was glad to still find a way to incorporate them into my shadowbox. I also lined the edges with trees to give more focus to the center. While looking at my sketch I decided it still seemed to plain so I gave more depth to the buildings. instead of just having one layer, I gave it two or three so there would continue to be more buildings for people to look at, I also sketched ideas for windows in the front row of buildings that would hopefully have an interesting reflection in the water.

Sketch of shadowbox

Although coming up with designs proved a little challenging, it was not too bad, and I struggled more with remembering how to work adobe illustratior. ] As I began to work on the design for my diorama I kept forgetting small details that led me to struggle as I tried to design different layers using images from the internet. Eventually I got more familiar with it again and was able to make a decent amount of progress on my diorama! Even though it is challenging to create all these layers, I think I will end up being happy that it takes work and focus to make it turn out the way that I want it to. 

Overall I think it was a pretty productive first day and I am super excited to see how my projects turn out!