My name is Sophia Spanos McGill, I am a first-year student enrolled in the Bachelor of Design in Visual communication. Within the program, I hope to focus on illustration and advance my skills as much as possible in this artistic area, especially since I love to paint digitally. I hope to either become a concept artist or a character designer for one of my favorite entertainment studios, such as Marvel Studios or Lucasfilm. Despite this, I do hope to develop my graphic design and branding abilities as well, seeing as they are an important component of my program.
I was born and raised in Boston, before moving to Luxembourg at the age of nine. I grew up in Luxembourg but knew that I would make my way back to North America one day. This helped me make my decision to come to Canada. Capilano University offered such an interesting program, I knew that it was the right choice for me.
My hobbies include drawing, both traditionally and digitally, working out, and writing.
As someone growing up in the 21st century, some of my earliest memories are tied to climate change. I remember attending an assembly in elementary school and watching a video that the 6th graders made about greenhouse gases and the destruction of the earth. Perhaps one of the most pressing issues in anyone’s day-to-day life is global warming. In the general public, there’s a want to be as environmentally friendly as possible, searching for opportunities to save water, conserve electricity or reduce one’s carbon footprint. This includes living as consciously as possible. Although certain routines can lead to lower carbon emissions, sustainable architecture as a solution is on the rise in the design and architectural circles. If one looks back into the history of architecture, there is a movement that was aware of nature, that could serve as a model for environmentally friendly architecture: the prairie style.
One of Frank Llyod Wright’s most famous buildings (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-20th-century-architecture-of-frank-lloyd-wright-world-heritage-site.htm)
The love child of infrastructure and nature
The prairie style was a movement in architecture that focuses on the environment surrounding architecture. American architects were understandably tired of the European tendency of rebirthing classical architectural forms, as was the case during the early 20th century. Ornate facades, intricate columns, and interweaving metalwork were all prominent in European architecture at the time. The American architects wanted to break away completely from tradition, and thus they turned to the “prairie style” of houses. Here, not dissimilar from the arts and crafts movement, nature played a big role. It would be a key component to how buildings would be designed Taking the center front stage, the interaction between environment and house was the main principle of prairie architecture.
the Taliesin (https://franklloydwright.org/site/taliesin-hillside/)
Architectural elements that popped up were open spaces that let in lots of light and air, large windows with a view out into greenery, and simple interior designs that meshed well with the curves and edges of natural elements. Buildings should be humble and prioritize functionality over decoration. Despite focusing on the function of design, the style didn’t revolve around it in such extreme ways as the Bauhaus school did.
A prairie style interior (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/516295544754843117/ )
Frank Lloyd Wright – The champion of the prairie
The Prairie style was founded by Frank Lloyd Wright. A young American architect, part of the “The New School of the Middle West”, he is nowadays considered the “greatest American architect of all time”. He started designing houses for the prairie, hence the name of the style, before exploring his style through international commissions. He then founded the Taliesin Fellowship, hoping to teach others about his Prairie style through involving them in his projects. Inspired by Prairie houses, some of his notable works include the “Robie House” and are characterized by two- or one-story buildings.
the Robie House https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/robie-house-frank-lloyd-wright
By the end of his career, he had designed over 1100 works and over 500 had been turned into actual buildings. He was internationally acclaimed and traveled the world holding lectures about his architecture
the Frank Lloyd Wright logo https://franklloydwright.org/
The future of architecture – design during the climate crisis
As mentioned in my introduction, the prairie style can serve as a basis for sustainable architecture. The main idea of having our external and internal climates communicate with each other is key for moving forward and creating infrastructure in a world plagued with a climate crisis. The external world is ever-changing, especially rapidly and dangerously nowadays. If we can re-learn to link our everyday life to our climate, the degree of separation between everyday people and the world they’re destroying will be one step closer to smaller. Getting in touch with nature again, especially in places such as urban areas, is key to developing an architecture that not only is aware, but proactive with our environment. I believe that the prairie style could be the transitional style between our present way of living and the much-needed, climate active, future way of living.
an example of sustainable architecture https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/when-good-design-works-with-nature-to-shape-a-sustainable-future
As I have been more and more intrigued by the ukiyo-e art of Japan during the Edo period, I found it only appropriate to examine and reproduce the techniques and aesthetics of this art form for my historical artifact.
for the mountains (https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/japanese-woodblock-prints-ukiyo-e)for the textures! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Views_of_%C5%8Cmi)for the perspective and general flow of the painting! (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/557039047650511126/)
For this project, I struggled with it more than I wanted to. Specifically, I spent a lot of time trying to decide on a subject for my ukiyo-e painting. I wanted to do a scene from mythology but realized that required more research than I could properly put into this project and I wanted to avoid rushing through it and not respectfully treating the subject. Then, I considered a historical moment, but again, stumbled across the problem of needing a certain amount of time to do the proper research which was lacking. A scene from a brothel was also off the table. I sketched out an idea for a beautiful woman, but when trying to decide what style I wanted to draw her in, found myself in the same predicament: If I wanted to draw her in a typical Ukiyo-e style, I would need to study many paintings and prints to do it properly and respectfully. So finally, I found a subject I could paint that would require the least amount of research, studying, and time to execute it: A beautiful landscape.
I chose mountains, as this was a typical element in ukiyo-e prints. That paired with clouds and the sun, I felt like I covered a sufficient amount of elements from traditional paintings. Then, I looked into just how to paint them. For the mountains, I painted them going from red to green. The foreground has yellow slowly added to it. For the cliffs, I used a flat brush to paint the curved ledges and the trees on the mountains.
I wanted to add a certain contemporary and personal touch and added an element of perspective into the piece. Usually, ukiyo-e prints don’t have much of a perspective, but I wanted the viewer to feel like they were looking up into the mountain-scape. I achieved this by bending the mountains inwards slightly and curving the clouds.
my sketches!
To complete the piece, I made it into a scroll, gluing two wood rods to the ends of the painting (which I wrapped up the back) and attaching bamboo string so I could hang it up. this was something I wanted to achieve since the beginning and getting it to hang properly and look like a traditional scroll was quite satisfying!
I would give myself an 8/10! very proud of what I was able to make, and I felt like I did my subject and this area of art justice. I spent probably close to 8-10 hours on it, between sketching, researching, painting, and putting together the scroll.
For the third blog post for Jeff’s 131 Survey class, I chose Eva Gonzales as my main subject. I decided upon writing about her after discovering that she was more well known for her connection to her teacher than her own art. Furthermore, she was an artist who knew the limitations she faced as a female artist and worked around them, excelling despite her disadvantage.
a photograph of Eva Gonzales
Gonzales was a French painter of the impressionist movement. Although she couldn’t attend the “Ecole des Beaux-Arts” in Paris, she was able to get artistic training due to the high “bourgeois” status of her family, her father being a writer and mother a musician. She was Edouard Manet’s sole student.
“Une loge aux italiens”
She is well known, as many enjoy comparing her pieces to Manets as a point of criticism.
On a boat
Gonzales painted portraits, still lives and a central theme of her pieces are women and children. She was also interested, as other impressionist painters were, in the contemporary life of working-class people in France. Unfortunately, she was limited in what she could depict, not possessing the same ability as male artists to wander around Paris at different times to capture the way the light interacted with the world.
on the toilet
She died at the age of 34 due to childbirth, with an impressive 90 paintings and pastel drawings in her repertoire. She lived a short, but successful life, one defined by her womanhood.
For Judy’s 141 blog post 3, I decided to research more about Japan during its isolation period.
A tumultuous past
Before the opening of trade with Europe. Japan was thriving. It was multiple centuries into one its most prosperous rules: the Edo period, also called the Tokugawa era. This period started after the Sengoku one, which was tremulous and chaotic. The Sengoku period had been plagued with wars, with “daimyo” fighting each other for control of the country. It was so violent and bloody that today it’s also called the “Warring States Period”
This chaos was ended in 1600 by an infamous samurai.
The great warrior Tokugawa Ieyasu became the ruler of Japan (Shogun) after winning the battle of Sekigahara. This was in October 1600. With his emergence, the Tokugawa period started, beginning a new era of peace in Japan.
Remarkably, this peace was due to division. Japanese society was divided during the Edo period. When one thinks of a successful society, the first image that comes to mind is one without segregation or division of any sort. One where everyone is equal. This wasn’t the case in Japan during the Edo period. Everyone was separated into one of four categories, straight out of a dystopian YA novel: warriors, merchants, artisans, and farmers. And merchants? Bottom of the barrel, with warriors at the top of the societal food chain.
For a heavily militarized and controlled society, people were quite happy. This was because the military force, called Shogunate, was in charge of establishing brothels and other hotspots where the Japanese population could relax and have fun safely. Sadly, the Tokugawa Shogunate was the last shogunate to exist.
During this time there was extreme urban growth. Cities and town expanded. One of the cities that grew demographically and in popularity was Edo. It was the seat of the Tokugawa government, hence the name of the period. Within the Edo castle, Ieyasu set up base and it became the political center of Japan, although Kyoto remained the capital. By 1721, it had a population of 1 million, becoming one of the largest metropolises of its time.
Today, Edo is called Tokyo and has a population of 14 million, stretching for 850 square miles.
Art, as did many other areas, flourished in Japan under the Tokugawa period. Woodblock printing in particular rose in popularity. These prints were called ukiyo-e. They were a combination of realism and decorative style, often representing scenes from brothels or urban backdrops.
One of the most famous pieces of art ever created is a ukiyo-e print, made during the Edo period: “The great wave off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai
Much of this demographic, cultural, and artistic growth was the result of extreme isolation. For nearly 300 years, Japan had little to no interaction with any other nation. No one was allowed in or out. This started in 1639, enforced by the shogunate after the intrusion of European and Christian influences.
Pandora’s box
Inevitably, by the hand of western powers, Japan was forced to open trade with Europe in 1858. Japan had stayed separated and independent from the influence of the west for centuries. It flourished and had its own rich culture and history. Then it was made to mingle with the Europeans, who were “inspired” by their way of life and art. They took their genre of self-expression and dubbed it “Japanism” like it was a fleeting movement in the canon of art history. From kimonos to the way Japanese artists flattened their backgrounds and applied color in flat sheets of paint. Everything was taken and turned over in the hands of the French, the Germans, and many others. In 1868, the Meiji restoration started, and the great Edo period officially came to an end.
For Judy’s 141 Zine project, I chose to research and make a zine on constructivism and constructivist type. When I had taken art history before this art movement had piqued my interest. I took this project as an opportunity to expand my knowledge.
The first thing I did after receiving the instructions for this project and deciding on constructivism was research. Then, I created a mood board. There, I collected ideas and aesthetic inspiration from famous constructivist art pieces. Right off the bat, I knew that I not only wanted each page to look “constructivist” but that when laid out, the zine as a whole would look like a Rodchenko artwork. To do this, I made about 5 sketches in my sketchbook to elaborate certain layout ideas, before creating two drafts.
my sketchesMy first draft (with mistakes! one half was upside down D:)Success! Final draft completed
There, I included certain artistic elements I knew I wanted to include. Some of these elements were cutouts of the creators of the constructivist type and a Russian city in the 20s. I also intentionally only used black, white, and red because these were the primary colors of the constructivist artists. I also ended up including a megaphone, random geometric shapes, and lines.
I would give myself an 8/10 as I did a lot of preparation for this piece and spent a lot of time executing it. I would take points off due to the slightly chaotic layout of the entire zine and the “connotation” page, which is lacking in design. I probably spent around 10 hours on this assignment, many spent on my fully-fledged drafts, and then my slow working time as I’ve been sick.
For my second blog post for Jeff’s 131 Survey & Principles of illustration class, I chose Rosalba Carriera as my artist to research more about. I decided yet again to learn more about a female artist, settling for Carriera due to her painting “Self-portrait as Winter”. When I was looking up which artist to choose, I saw this portrait accredited to Carriera and was taken aback. Never had I seen an elderly lady portrayed in a painting with such an air of elegance, intelligence, and power.
Carriera was a Venetian painter, born January 12th, 1673. An artist from the Roccoco period, she is still considered as one of the most influential female painters ever. Despite this, there is no record that she ever received any professional training, nor that she was ever someone’s apprentice. (this is debated, with certain art historians believing she was taught by Guiseppe Diamantini)
She was so well known due to her skill with pastels. Dubbed “the queen of pastels” by many, she excelled in this medium while many painters were focused on using oil paints. Her pieces are soft and light, with figures often almost dissolving into the backgrounds they stand in front of. But the intense eye contact with the viewer grounds them, creating a tether to our realm.
Her miniature paintings were mounted onto pieces of ivory, which became a trademark of hers. While she was still alive, these were so popular people started making their replicates. These were “travel-sized” pieces, that sold well to the “tourists” passing through Venice. This is proof that Carriera was not only an artistic genius but also an entrepreneur, who knew how to sell her work and herself to the public eye.
I was inspired to base my second blog post for Judy’s Survey 141 class on Gutenberg after finding out he was put on trial and lost his invention. I think the theme of geniuses being lost to time due to unfortunate circumstances is tragic and very prominent in our history. It is an interesting experience to relearn what one knows or what one has been taught. Thus, I found myself researching more about Gutenberg and the situation that got him written out of history for a considerable amount of time.
The man himself: Johannes Gutenberg
History’s acclaimed hustler
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German craftsman and inventor, born in Mainz. He is most well known as the “inventor” of movable type. I use the word inventor lightly, as printing and movable type existed in many other places beforehand. Gutenberg was infamous for entering into contracts with partners and keeping his process secret from them. This led many of his partners to second guess and suspect Gutenberg of crookedness. Often, partners would request to become a partner after such stunts. This supposed genius was considered by many to be a con man, requesting an insane amount of money and shutting his investors out when he received it.
The very invention that garnered him immortality was born from an intricate web of loans. The actual reason why anyone even knew of this creation was due to another partner suing him – legal documents revealed his recent financial proceedings. For his printing press, Gutenberg borrowed materials from a goldsmith, a carpenter, and had been requesting money for his secret project.
his secret invention: the printing press
The trial of trials
As was typical for the time, artists often needed either a commission or a patron who would support them financially to produce their craft. Back then, writers were considered craftsmen and thus needed a source of money. Johannes Gutenberg was no exception, especially with his invention of the printing machine. To create his 42-line bible, he approached the rich financier Johann Fust to borrow money. Fust agreed, lending Gutenberg 1550 guilders, a modern equivalent of about 1,066 CAD.
Gutenberg caught up in a quest for perfection, didn’t pay Fust back promptly enough. This led Fust to sue him.
the printing machine in action!
Justice is served?
The treacherous outcome of the trial was the switch of ownership of Gutenberg’s printing machine. The invention which Gutenberg had spent many years of his life developing now lay in the hands of Fust.
In his last years of life, Gutenberg was provided with food and clothing by the Archbishop of Mainz. He was also exempt from select taxes, meaning he most likely died impoverished.
For Judy’s 141 Survey class we had to prepare a mood board in Invision. At first, this assignment confused me and I lost a lot of time trying to figure out where to start. But then I decided that I wanted to research more about something I already knew about. That I how I ended up choosing three monuments that I had already known. But what was new to me was their connection. In choosing the three of them I had a cool moment of realization: “wow, everything had to do with death!”
At that moment, I had a concept that interested me and I rolled with it.
Then, it was a fun task of digging deeper into certain aspects. Design was an obvious one, as the three monuments had interesting design features. Then, objects were truly intriguing because they usually tied back into the obsession with death that the ancients had. Lastly, science was also an “oh yeah” moment, where I noticed all three monuments were tied to religious practice, belief, or just an ancient idea.
I spent close to 5 hours on this and would give myself a 6/10. I’m not quite happy with the details I had to leave out and think I was too superficial with certain bits of information.
I learned a lot about the intention of these ancient civilizations and just why it was so important for them to erect buildings such as the pyramids. Being constantly confronted with death changes the way you look at the world and this project brought that to my attention
My favorite part of my moldboard is a pretty basic part: the header! I think it looks quite pretty
For the first blog post of Jeff Burgess’ 131 Survey & Principles of illustration class, I chose to research a female artist of the High Renaissance and Mannerism period. I decided on Catherina van Hemessen, as her story moved me: Catherina was a female artist whose significance to art was forgotten and disregarded until recently.
Van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter, one of the first female Flemish artists whose works are known. Daughter of painter Jan Sanders van Hemessenn, she was taught his skills from a young age. Her most well-known works include many small-scale portraits of women, a couple of religious paintings, and the first depiction of a self-portrait where the subject, herself, is sitting at an easel. This idea was used by many later artists, like Rene Magritte. Despite her incredible artistic invention, she isn’t accredited by many for her achievement.
A realist, her portraits are characterized by a dark or neutral background to heighten the intimacy and an unusual lack of eye contact with the viewer
Later in her life, Maria of Austria became her patron and Van Hemessen even had three male apprentices.
Her paintings now hang in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the National Gallery in London.
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