Crayon Rubbings

Goals of this assignment: 

The goals for this assignment were to practice playing with composition and textures. We had to find different ways to fill two pages of paper with icons, text, colors and textures.

New skills that I have learned: 

I learned that even though almost everything around us has a texture, few will appear on paper when doing the rubbings. Some textures created little to nothing on the page and some were too exaggerated and made my piece look crowded. I learned that smaller surfaces with smaller patterns worked much better. I also learned to be careful with the icons I used since some were too big or too small for the size of the image I was trying to create.

Critique: 

 Crayon rubbing one: 

The piece is has two cool colors (blue and purple) and two warm colors (red and pink. It has the top half of the woman icon in red and the bottom half in blue, while the man icon is inverted. The background is made up of small circles and is a solid color of pink and in the foreground the text reads "Unisex. Restroom, Restroom".  I was trying to bring forth the topic of transgendered individuals and the controversy our society has created towards what bathroom they chose to use. Although the Unisex restroom is for both men and women, they are not always an option. Something as simple as using the restroom can cost someone more than it's worth and that's unfair.


 

Crayon rubbing two: 

This piece also has both cool and warm colors. The background and the text in the foreground are in warm colors while the icons in the center are cool. The word "unisex" is repeated four times, three in red and one in purple. The icons are those of man, woman and child. The woman icon is in blue, the child in purple and the man in pink. I wanted to play with the idea of gender in this piece. I colored the woman icon in blue, which is usually a masculine color, the man in pink, which is usually a feminine color and made the child icon purple, which is a mixture of both  previous colors. I wanted the viewer to decide if the woman icon was feminine because of the symbol or masculine because of the color and if the man icon was masculine because of the symbol or feminine because of it's color. I also wanted them to try and guess the child's gender. It'd be difficult because of the color purple and the symbol. Which I guess it's the kind of idea I wanted to bring forth. Gender is not the same as sex, it has a lot to do with identity and expression of the individual. Others shouldn't be guessing it, it would be like trying to guess a name.