Abstract Cities

This is one of the final tasks in part 3 before the assignment, its all about using colour to create a series of abstract designs that represent cities. The challenge was to balance dominant and subordinate colours and deciding the positioning of the blocks as well as colours used.

Before I went into this I browsed other peoples take on this exercise and see the angle they took, the vast majority chose to take images of the city and create abstract remakes of that image. Now whilst these are all good ideas and they turned out well I wanted to steer away from that as often there is a lot of dead space in these images such as sky, fields and beaches and are just one colour. I rather liked the piece by Ben Nicholson and loved the style and how all the colours interacted with each other. 

My idea was to take elements of the city and represent them with a block of colour, they could be literal like the colour of the flag or symbolic like using a block of gold to represent old buildings as well as representing the monarchy. This would also challenge me to decide on placement, I wanted each piece to have a unique feel to them and not just look the same in terms of structure with the just the colours changing. 

To make them unique I decided on some research points for each city, these were as followed:

• Flag
• Food
• Landmarks
• Geographical features
• Architecture
• Colour palettes/Feel of the city (Montreal had a very subdued autumn feel, whilst Marrakech was incredibly vibrant
• Politics
• Climate

I chose these points because they would be different for every single city and would offer me a palette of colours to use

The next thing I did was take these categories and apply them to each city, I wasn't really thinking about what colours I would use I was just taking an array of colours I saw. Some I would never use. 

Madrid was the first city I researched, here are the things I noted down:

• The colour of the flag is red and yellow
• Madrid lies on a river
• Lots of old architecture ( I used a gold tone to represent this)
• Green light on top of a skyscraper in the skyline
• Real Madrid football team 
• Prawns
• Dark red city flag
• Crown (Monarch)
• Fields surrounding the river

I then took the images I saved to create a palette of colours inside photoshop, this way I wasn't staring at a collage of images whilst deciding structure, I was looking at a hand-picked colour palette. This isn't for Madrid but rather for Marrakech, you can see how I have picked the colours out that I think best represents Marrakech. I've also placed the colours that are used together next to each other, for example, the red and dark green from the flag, I want these colours near each other in the final piece as they are best effective there. You can also see how I've chosen to select dominant and subordinate colours, in the case of Marrakech the bright colours from the market will be used sparingly, however, my background will be made up of the light blue from the sky and oranges from the desert.

These images I've selected not only allow me to make a palette of colours, but they also allow me to find images such as buildings I want to abstractly represent in my A5 cover.

 I then went on to sketch out possible thumbnails and ideas for the placement of these blocks, I considered: buildings, rivers, mountains, skylines, skyscrapers, deserts, statues and food as well as a whole range of city-specific elements such as Vegemite for Melbourne.

All of these elements combined went on to help me create these A5 images, they also saved a massive amount of time as they gave me the correct building blocks.

Madrid: The thing I wanted to focus on with Madrid was the river running through it and the lush green fields that surrounded it. I also wanted to included the contrast of these fields with the skyscrapers that fill the city. The huge skyscrapers were also mixed in with the beautiful old style buildings. I'm also a lover of food so I included a block of light pink to represent prawns. I also included a strip of gold on top of the whole cover as a crown to represent the monarchy of Spain.

Blue dress

Flag

Skyline (Green light on top of the skyscraper)

Areal view of the river and the fields

Malmo: After looking at images of Malmo I picked up on with pastel colour houses along the river as well as meatballs and gravy. I took each of the colours of the meatballs and gravy and layered them on top of each other in the top right-hand corner, I even added some herbs on top. The largest part of the cover is a section of the Swedish flag, I thought the yellow strips broke up the large amount of blue that is present. I then further broke it up with the inclusion of the pastel houses placed alongside the river block. Although these pastel colours aren't necessarily dominant colours amongst a large amount of pale blues they stand nicely. This was the first cover that I really experimented with implementing tints and tones inside my work, these not only added a further depth of colour but also stopped the covers from becoming flat as they acted as highlights and shading.

Flag

Meatballs and lingonberry sauce

Houses on the river

Managua: With Managua, I used the image of a yellow building with a red roof as my key inspiration, this style of the building stood out to me and the beauty of the architecture was too hard to ignore, the building had these white panels as well ( refer to image). Whilst creating the piece I noticed the white panels could also double as the white parts of the flag so I added a blue panel to complete it as well as helping to balance the colour. Another common trend with all of my A5 covers is that I've tried to create abstract representations of things like buildings to stylise them and create interesting designs that make you think and not instantly resemble what they are modelled off. On the ride side of the page is 4 stripes, this is a beach in Managua, the lighter beige is the sand followed by the wet sand, the froth and then finally the water.

Yellow building with red roof

This is where the bright colours come from

Flag

 4 tone beach

Manchester: I thought Manchester was going to be a lot easier than this however after doing research I realised there weren't that many iconic elements and just doing a boring city scene look the best. I did find the clock tower which I chose as my key element. I then found a gallery in Manchester which had some awesome looking pieces, I chose to take some colours from them. I also used the colour of fish and chips as well as scones and jam to represent that food in the UK (I couldn't find any Manchester specific foods). Obviously, I included the colours of the Union Jack as well as a strip of gold at the top for the monarchy. I then noticed the diversity of buildings in Manchester, they've received a lot of investment so there is now a mixture of modern and old style architecture. I chose a strip of white and black as this is the colour combo I used in the previous exercise to represent "New". There was also the gold and red of the Man Utd which I incorporated as well.

Gallery Piece

Gallery Piece

Fish and Chips

Scones

Union Jack

Man Utd

Clock Tower

Manhattan: This was such a fun one to put together, there were so many elements of Manhattan and I really wanted to include them all, firstly If you've ever seen a birds-eye view of Manhattan you will see Central Park smack bang in the middle, I thought it was only fitting that I had my own abstract central park in the middle of my page, I also dedicated the top right hand corner to a slice of pizza. The black pinstripes are the stripes from the Yankee uniform. I then flipped the stripes horizontally to be the stripes on the American flag. The yellow panel is the yellow from a classic New York taxi. I then created the Statue of Liberty out of 4 blocks on the left-hand side. The black box in the bottom left is the 9/11 memorial. I then used the grey as my subordinate filler colour because of all the skyscrapers and urban buildings. I also tied in the yellow numbers that fill the outside of wall street for stock prices, this doubled nicely as the flame for the statue of liberty which meant I wasn't adding too many yellow/gold shades into the piece, this also allowed me to blend the colour in and pull the other yellows together.

Central Park

Flag

Statue of Liberty

Pizza

Stock Market

Yankees

Street and Taxis

Marrakesh: Marrakesh is such a vibrant and colourful country and I wanted to embody that here, I saw a beautiful photo of the sunset in the desert and decided that I would use that as my centre focus, the 3 pillars together make up the Sahara Palace hotel, what they achieve as well, is acting as a transition from the pale blues and oranges of the sand and sky into the vibrant colours at the top. They also balance the image by adding a bit of dominant colour into an otherwise subordinate sunset scene. The colours of the market were pulled directly from an image and because of this pair really well with each other. I also chose to pull a small bit of yellow and light blue to the top to improve the flow. Again the colours of the Morrocon flag are present in the image and the green from palm trees.

Sahara Palace hotel

Sunset

Flag

Market

Deep blue sky

Spice Market

Marseilles: This is such a beautiful city rich in culture, I couldn't decide what I wanted my dominant feature to be so I chose both Dame de la Garde and gorgeous pinkish village on a mountain with red roofs. Its also a coastal city so I added a patch of blue at the bottom with white squares as boats. I took the opportunity to add a darker block of blue and a red block with a boat in the middle to make the French flag. The darker grey, yellow, light pink and green at the top are the colours of seafood. Instead of adding the same pink for the prawns I used the pink from the houses to improve flow. The yellow from the inside of the muscles is also the same yellow used in the reflection on the water. Reusing colours help to create a richer palatte that works better alongside each other.

Flag

Seafood

Seafood 

Gold Statue above Dame de la Garde

Dame de la Garde

Pink Village and sea

The Village in the night time

Melbourne: For Melbourne, my main inspiration came from the Melbourne star and Luna Park, now this would prove difficult as the Melbourne star used diagonal facing blocks, I didn't want to ruin the feel of my work so far as including diagonal facing blocks would look out of place and create edges and shapes I didn't want to include in my designs. So I create a very square abstract version of it using the colours of the lights (blue and purple). For Luna park, I also created a very abstract version of the clown entrance. The yellow and brown at the top right are in place of a jar of Vegemite. Melbourne also had a lot of really nice greenery around the river.

City

Flag

Luna Park

Melbourne Star

Vegemite

Mumbai: Mumbai was the first city I created, this is shown by how basic it looks, I left it like this as I feel as its the closest to Ben Nicholson's piece. As much as I love how the rest of the cities came out this one is the most like my original inspiration which I steered away from.  This was the most important city I created as even though it took longer than the rest it was teaching me how to: balance colours, which colours should have a bigger block: which ones need to small accent colours: what tints and tones to use to fit with the other colours. These lessons are evident with how I chose dark blue as my dominant colour and then dotted green and orange around as more subordinate colours, however, the yellow and dark cream are the most subordinate and act as filler colours to allow the surrounding brighter colours to have more of an impact.

Montreal: This is hands down out of all of the pieces I created my favourite. Montreal is such a beautiful city, the muted pastel-like shades that fill the city are gorgeous, and there's a crisp autumn forest that surrounds the city. I tried to capture the packed in the forest with the deep greens and red and orange as accent colours. There was also a really nice set of 3 houses which I tried to capture in the bottom right-hand corner. The orange and blues above the forest are the sunset in the city. The colours of the Canadian flag are too dominant for this more muted solemn scene so I added them in a very small block just so they didn't interfere with the feel I was trying to create. I also used a tone of white that made it almost grey. Montreal also has a lot of factories which are now abandoned, I used the dark creams and reds to mix in with the greys of the skyscrapers.