These are the two inked Compositions I created for Phase 3 of the Urban Artifact project. These images were based on the four refined sketches created for the previous phase of this project. Out of the four refined sketches, I chose the two images above because even though there simple they also strongly represent the difference between a stable figure/ground relationship and an Ambiguous figure/ground relationship. The first image is a Stable figure/ ground relationship because of how the positive space dominates the negative space. The second image is an Ambiguous figure/ground relationship because of how the positive and negative space almost balances out. This part of the project took 2 hours.
Urban Artifacts: Phase 2
It took me roughly 2-3 hours to complete the thumbnail and refined sketches.
Urban Artifacts: Phase 2
The first image is a total of 6 thumbnail sketches and it represents an even number of 3 stable figures and 3 ambiguous figures. The time total of the sketch is around 4-5 minutes. The second image represents a ambiguous figure because its detail gives a organic shape that takes most of the ground (negative space) on one side, notice from its nature flow of the line and it’s not a geometric shape. This sketch had taken me in a total of around 3-5 minutes. The final image is consider a stable figure because the figure (positive space) seems to be in a very economy (calm) position therefore there’s not much action going on. This sketch took me in a total of 1-2 minutes (very quick, simple). Some similarities that I can point out between the ambiguous and stable sketch is both are obviously black & white, both have an organic shape and there’s more ground space than figure.
Urban Artifacts Phase 2
Urban Artifacts: Phase 2
Sorry in advance if it’s too light (About 4 hours)
The first two sketches are stable and I plan on skipping the detail when it comes to phase 3. It’s stable because the background surrounds the keychain and bracelet so the figure is clear. I The other two sketches are ambiguous because it’s supposed to make your eyes move from the gray areas back to the empty white areas.
Urban Artifact: Phase 1
It was a hot summer day in Brooklyn on a Saturday morning. Kids with their parents drinking their water and juices. While one child had a sprite can. Struggling to open it, the child accidentally break the top off. While the child mother grab the boy wrist to rush them to cross the street before the light change, the child looks back trying to see where the top of the can was, but instead he saw a man squashing down cigarette tipping paper while taking out a Trident gum from his pocket and threw the wrap on the ground.
Urban Artifacts Phase 1
Stable
Stable
Ambiguous All these things that us New Yorkers don’t really realize or do realize, are these objects/ paintings on the ground. It’s just things we see everyday, walking from place to place passing these marks or trash all the time, but if you really think of it, some of these marks/trash could have a reason/story behind it. You wonder how it got there, who dropped it there and why it is there.
urban artifacts phase 1
Urban Artifacts: Phase 1
#1 Stable: This bottle cap got abandoned by its bottle, leaving it in the right place where I would notice it and realize how much it was conveniently placed on the sidewalk where it could later be used in a project to show stable figure/ground.
#3 Stable: This piece of tin foil contrasts from the black background, which makes it an obvious figure ground.
#1 Ambiguous: This painting shows ambiguous figure/ground, even though it isn’t a picture of something outdoors it still shows how background color vs. foreground color makes a difference for obvious and ambiguous figure/ground. The composition shows very organic shapes, like the sky, clouds, and the skeleton ribs. The painting is by David Wojnarowicz @ the Whitney.
#2 Ambiguous: This wrapper for the candy called Smarties was just chilling on the outside area of City Tech all lonely. If there wasn’t so much debris around the wrapper it would’ve been a stable figure/ground example. It has very geometric shapes and the surrounding shapes are very organic which I think shows where the setting of this candy was being devoured.
#3 Ambiguous: This is another little segment of a whole painting of David Wojnarowicz.
Urban Artifacts: Phase 1
These images are all stable because if it were able to become black and white then there would be a clear distinction between all of these photos. These photos took my interest because i felt as if they were perfect examples to include in the project. My first stable image happens to be a leaf In the school floor. My second image Is a receipt also found on the school floor. Lastly, My final image Is an napkin resting in the school floor also.
All these images are perfect examples of ambiguous images because those images can be placed to become something mysterious. Also if it were to become black and white people would try to consider the different meanings. My first image was a black dried up gum that happened to be in the train station. My second image is rocks that I took pictures of when I went to Brooklyn Bridge park. My last image was taken on the pavement in the street.
Story:
For the first stable image I imagine that the leaf that was on the floor got there because someone had decided to rip out the leaf from a tree and put it in his pocket and forgot about it. After that, I imagine that the person put his hand in their pocket and found that the leaf was still there and they threw it away. In terms of my next two stable images I imagine that a person had to had bought coffee from Starbucks and later on put it in their coat pockets and after digging through their pockets all day long, the receipt and the napkins might have fell off their pockets because they happened to just want to liter.
For my first ambiguous image, I imagine that someone had been chewing gum and the gum lost flavor and the person happened to spit it out on the train tracks but they missed the tracks and the gum ended up staying on the yellow part of the platform. Since its in the train ,the gum is bound to get stepped on by the thousands of people that happen to travel using the MTA, and overall through time the gum ended up losing its color and turned out to be black. My next two images probably got there because nature wanted it to be there. Because I took pictures of rocks and the pavement. Sometimes the pavement could have paint. So yea thats my story.
Hours:
It took me about an Hour or two to work on this part of the project because I took my time trying to imagine the stories I could write for the images that I took. Also I counted the time it took for me to find pictures that I consider ambiguous and stable.
