- Oscar Wilde - part two

Our next class discussion broke down more of what we thought the poem's meaning was, and brainstormed multiple ideas for our book project. In the end we decided on youth and beauty vs. age and corruption. We brainstormed different "topics" and then we were to come back with compositions. For this, I ended up thinking I was going to chose photography as my form of medium, and began to brainstorm ideas while I looked through so of the photographs I had already taken. These are what I brought to class, but I wanted to explore some other topics as well. The compositions contain both beauty, corruption, and youth. They are all taken while on my trip to the Philippines.

- Oscar Wilde - part one

After reading in class, Oscar Wilde's poem, we had a discussion about youth vs. age and which was considered beautiful. Based on the discussion, these are the two compositions I came up with.
With only one day between classes and the project just beginning, all I could think of was contrasting between youth and age. My thoughts were that both are beautiful and showing that was all I could think of.

- Oscar Wilde -

Youth
by Oscar Wilde

'BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE MOST MARVELOUS YOUTH, AND YOUTH IS THE ONE THING WORTH HAVING.'

...Someday, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with it hideous fire, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.

Will it always be so? ...You have a wonderfully beautiful face. Don't frown. You have.

And Beauty is a form of Genius -- is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile ... People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible...Yes, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away.

You only have a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.

Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly...

Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...A new Hedonism --that is what your century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season...For there is such a little time that your youth will last -- such a little time.

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish.

Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memories of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!'

- Oscar Wilde -

Poster

Out of all of my compositions, I liked this one the most and would make it poster size. It has good movement, good use of white space, some depth to the background and doesn't have too much going on in it.

Five Color Composition

For this composition I wanted to take a letter and have it cover the whole page. I used the letter K and the created some copies of it. I was still playing with creating depth and also playing with the white space. At the last minute I decided to add a D in behind the K, but only a while one, giving it more white space, I like how it added to the composition, because it is on top of some of the copies of K but under others. Over all I really like how this one turned out..and it is much less soupy.



With this one, I continued to play with white space. I used the letters D and B. They are the initials of both my husband and soon baby boy. So I thought it would be fun to play with and possible put up something in the babies room. The nice thing is that both letters have the same kind of movement, so its hard to tell where the B's are. I tried working with the white space, and background again. I feel that this one might have gotten a little soupy but not near as busy as my last set of compositions.



The final one I feel that I finally was getting somewhere with creating depth withing the background. I created this kind of spiral shape out of both letters and numbers and then changed the opacity on the layers farther back. The closer to the top, the more you are able to see them. I like how the colors work together, what the white space is doing and how the darker colors also create some distance. Its a little soupy and maybe if I would have made the piece smaller and in the corner, with the top left having more of just the background color and less going on, it would have been a better composition. I do however feel that these 3 compositions are some of my best work. I am a little sad that we will be moving on from here and had fun creating.

4 Color Compositions

For my first composition I wanted to continue with the fall theme and incorporate my swirly's that I like so much. I like how playful this turned out although I wish I had a lighter blue. The weirls are suppose to be wind blowing around the leaves, so I feel that if I had used a lighter blue the colors would have worked better together.



Then I moved on to Illustrator. We were told to begin incorporating letters into our compositions as objects rather than thinking of them as letters. I really enjoyed using Illustrator, and playing with the color and compositions. In this one I used the initials to my name KD. Both lower and upper case, and began to connect them down and across the page. I also played witht the white space and creating depth. Its a good start but I dont think I have figured it out just yet.




This one was also done in Illustrator, and again I played with white space. I dont remeber what letters I used. I just picked ones that I liked the way the looked. I think the font I picked is playful but a wider one would have helped with the effect I was trying to go for. I tired making the font shaped bigger but once I got the width I liked, I lost a lot of the detail that I liked. So it was a challenge to find a happy medium. I dont think I quite found it. But its a work in progress.

One of the things we talked about in class was to not let my compositions get too "soupy". These defiantly have a lot going on in them, and the background is kind of lost. This is something to keep in mind with my next compositions.