|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 12:21PM
#1
|
Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2006
|
Let's have a portraiture contest! Here's how it works:
1) Your subjects: each of the five colors - or each arc, wedge, or dyad, or some set of relationships among such things, or the like. (Do you have to do a complete cycle? Obviously not, but my prior opinion is that each portrait will say the most when it exists in context. Of course, feel free to point to draw a one-off or two and claim they complete or replace members of a collection someone else already posted, since that serves the same function.) Enter as many times as you like.
2) Your medium: MS Paint or equivalent; in blacks, whites, and greys.
3) Your constraints: strictly no representation allowed. No skulls or angels or angel skulls; no text; the only content you're allowed is form. Obviously representationality is a spectrum, but when in doubt, consider if you can make it more abstract; and if you can't, just go with it - it's not like you have anything to lose anyway.
4) Your title: "Untitled." Or more precisely: name each series "Untititled #___," where "___" is some number (duh,) and append letters mechanically (a, b, c...) to the specific title of each item (their internal order chosen randomly.) So I might offer up "Untitled #4," with #4a, #4b, #4c, #4d, and #4e. The purpose of all this is so we can refer to portraits without you telling us who their subjects are, so don't (tell us who their subjects are.)
5) Your criteria: elegance, clarity (of referent) but also subtlety (in means of acheiving clarity), cleverness, inspiring insightful critical comments, the usual. (As you might have guessed, you will not be judged on technical ability.)
6) Your judges: everybody. Just analyze the hell out of everything other people post (that's interesting enough to inspire that.) Coming up with a list of formal winners beyond that is pointless.
7) Your prize: uh, the fun of participating, obviously.
If you want to break the letter of the rules while adhering to the spirit by submitting a five-movement piano piece or whatever, obviously go for it. I look forward to seeing what we come up with! ^_^
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 12:53PM
#2
|
Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2008
|
Hmm, I feel like this first one I made is very representational, even though it isn't really intended to. It also has some technical issues, but you told me to work in paint. Jerk. (I am much better in PowerPoint) Untitled #8a
Show
Edit: The rest of the series Untitled #8b
Show
Untitled #8c
Show
Untitled #8d
Show
Untitled #8e
Show
Note, this isn't the order I necessarily created them in (except Untitled #8a was the first).
"I think me going Bang bang bang I win is pretty intuitive" Mafia Record: Wouldn't you like to know? 2011 Mafia Awards - Mastermind of the Year mymoment
Show
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 1:40PM
#3
|
- Unconventional Mafia Pro
- Dark Lord
Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
|
"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice." THE COALITION WAR GAME-Phyrexian Praetor Round 1: (4-1-2, 1 kill) Round 2: (16-8-2, 4 kills) Round 3: (18-9-2, 1 kill) Round 4: (22-10-0, 2 kills) Round 5: (56-16-3, 9 kills) Round 6: (8-7-1) [current round] Last Edited by Ralph on blank, 1920
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 1:44PM
#4
|
Date Joined:
Nov 25, 2009
|
So, if I understand it correctly, we need to make some kind of abstract representation of the colors in paint?
"What is etherium but the next logical step?" It's all my fault.
Show
Hell, if they steal from us, we'd be honored.
oh my god, AWESOME!
Then changing the Slivers was your idea! haha
lol
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 1:52PM
#5
|
Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2008
|
Untitled #8e is better than Untitled #13d!
Slightly more seriously, I feel as though Untitled #13e and Untitled #13c both edge into representational territory.
Also, Untitled #13b, while by process of elimination I think I know what color it represents, I'm not sure if I understand the design choices. The fractionalized "head" I think I can understand, but I don't think I understand the tail. Anyone else's thoughts?
"I think me going Bang bang bang I win is pretty intuitive" Mafia Record: Wouldn't you like to know? 2011 Mafia Awards - Mastermind of the Year mymoment
Show
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 2:58PM
#6
|
Date Joined:
Feb 28, 2008
|
Untitled #22a
Show
Untitled #22b
Show
Untitled #22c
Show
Untitled #22d
Show
Untitled #22e
Show
I may have gotten into representational territory. I'm not an artist, so sue me. Untitled #22c is the one I'm least happy with, but we'll see if you guys can tell which is which.
Micorku's World Bits - A Vorthos writing about various creative topics. Updates sporadically Iroas - The world needs heroes - will you answer the call? There is also an RPG that is in Pre-Alpha stage.
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 3:24PM
#7
|
- Unconventional Mafia Pro
- Dark Lord
Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
|
I finally figured out my problem with b. I've edited it.
"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice." THE COALITION WAR GAME-Phyrexian Praetor Round 1: (4-1-2, 1 kill) Round 2: (16-8-2, 4 kills) Round 3: (18-9-2, 1 kill) Round 4: (22-10-0, 2 kills) Round 5: (56-16-3, 9 kills) Round 6: (8-7-1) [current round] Last Edited by Ralph on blank, 1920
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 3:30PM
#8
|
Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2006
|
PowerPoint is a perfectly fine equivalent to MS Paint as far as I'm concerned. So is pretty much anything you might use: the main point of bringing up MS Paint was to emphasize that these don't need to look good along any traditional metric. On #8
Show
     , yes? The one I find least satisfactory here is  /a, because it does feel representational in the "wrong" way - the easiest reading is that the Pythagorean Theorem is standing in, as a Famous Theorem, for science and logic (as well as serving as a pun on "rational.") A more distant reading that I like is that for an equivalent raw substance (a given quantity of area) is capable of assuming many different forms. looks at a square and sees two smaller squares that its substance could be shaped into.
I really like how  can be read as hierarchical or egalitarian or both. Mad props for capturing its ambiguity there so elegantly.
Intuitively I feel confident about  and  here, but intellectually I could see them switched as well.My intuition tells me , although intellectually I like better. Both b and e plausibly express 's pattern of replication and growth, and e can be read as a planner's map of choices untaken and possibilities considered and dismissed, extending out into the future. I find it far from odd that they were the toughest two, since they read the most ambigously!
I love the use of the repeating motif, though I feel it's weakened considerably by not being extended throughout the cycle. 13c feels too representational, but I really like the symmetry with 13a, as well as the basic idea of what you're doing with it. My instinct would be to have the cracked-but-remaining half surrounded with the pieces of the destroyed half. I'm unsure whether 13a is better with a divisor at all - though interestingly this would make it quite similar to 8b, which I read as , so maybe Aquinas was right and needs a degree of relationality along with its oneness - and whether 13b is employing the motif in the same language as 13a and 13c.
13d and 8e are both precisely what the first thing that came to mind for me on  as well. I wonder if you sat down a thousand Magic players what percentage would do something fairly similar. lol is this actually a portraiture contest? can i get it broken down in laymans terms? sorry, thanks
So, if I understand it correctly, we need to make some kind of abstract representation of the colors in paint?
Xyoque expressed the answer to this perfectly. Demento and Tevish (and, edit, Micorku) expressed it far more perfectly.
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 3:46PM
#9
|
- Unconventional Mafia Pro
- Dark Lord
Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
|
I've decided to redo 13d and 13e without removing the older versions. here are the mk2 Untitled #13d, mk2
Show
Untitled #13e, mk2
Show
"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice." THE COALITION WAR GAME-Phyrexian Praetor Round 1: (4-1-2, 1 kill) Round 2: (16-8-2, 4 kills) Round 3: (18-9-2, 1 kill) Round 4: (22-10-0, 2 kills) Round 5: (56-16-3, 9 kills) Round 6: (8-7-1) [current round] Last Edited by Ralph on blank, 1920
|
|
|
|
11 months ago ::
Jul 24, 2012 - 3:53PM
#10
|
Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2006
|
Some shots of my own soon enough, promise. On #22
Show
Representational - or, perhaps more accurately, covertly textual - but what I really like here is the negative definition of 22a, if that is indeed . Every other color wants to do something with this little circular universal signifier, but manifests in just its bare being. This is a great example of how you can create a vocabulary through juxtaposition. 8b and 13a and 22a all mean completely different things because of their context and I think that's great. I don't even care that I can't discriminate between and because that's clearly not the point.
I'm not sure how 22d fits into this gestalt. I understand why it does, or perhaps rather doesn't, but the fact that it doesn't I feel undermines the effect you have going with 22a. It implies something significant about and but I can't make out what it is, and feel as though it's an accident. You could say that also escapes the model by embodying pure becoming without any being, at the opposite pole from , but that doesn't really come through (and so obviously would be represented by something that could contain a circle but doesn't, like an empty arrow say, that that's not it.) The chaotic shape could be a transformation of the circle itself but that doesn't really come through either, and I'm not sure what it would mean if it did.
|
|
|
