Andrades blog

This assignment had several different elements to it, we first had to come up with an image of an exemplary product, and bring it in for interpretation. I chose the legendary Buck Knife, a product that has been around for over 100 years. The Buck Knife is nothing flashy, it has a simple, yet rugged design that has worked well and, in my opinion does not need to be changed. For the sake of this assignment, I was forced to “change” this all but perfect knife. This essay will describe my thought processes and ideas behind the changes.

In class, we presented drawings of our products and students commented on our work and gave us some potential ideas for change. Classmates said I should make the handle camouflage; I could not do that because I felt as if it would ruin the knife’s image. One student suggested I give it an ultra strong blade, similar to that of a Samurai sword; I liked that idea as I have snapped the blade on my Buck Knife. Another idea was to add a flashlight to the handle but again, I felt it would damage the integrity of the design. A classmate suggested adding an improved grip and I really liked that idea because the knife can get slippery after using it for cutting bait, gutting animals, etc. Some other ideas classmates suggested were attaching a lanyard to it, and adding a place for storage within it. I chose not to add the lanyard because it is relatively pointless for a folding knife, and the inner storage would weaken the structure of the knife.

The painting can be described with one word, huge. The paper we were given was much bigger than what was needed to paint a knife that is about 6 ½ inches when opened. Needless to say, the knife was not painted to scale. A challenge that arose was that I needed to cover the whole paper with both the product and a background. I had no idea what to do for the background, so I just started drawing thoughts into my sketchbook, and as I drew them, I was able to piece things together. I started with a nature scene with mountains and game animals, but I came to the conclusion that my drawing ability was not nearly that advanced. My next idea was the American Flag, I believe that would have looked great, but again my artistic abilities aren’t good enough and I CANNOT screw up my flag. I then came to the idea of BUCK in big bold lettering, a simple yet meaningful background.

Colors. Who would have thought picking colors could be such a pain. Certainly not me, I could not figure out what to do for colors, nor was I very good at mixing them into other colors. I eventually came up with some colors that I thought were adequate, the handle of the knife was a dark brown and a dark yellow that resembled gold. The blade of the knife was a grey/sliver combination. Without the help of the instructor, I would not have been able to mix the colors. The big bold letters were a dark green that, in my opinion, came out very well. The rest of the monstrous paper was covered in a maroon/dark red color.

The final challenge of this painting was a problem with shading. The handle of the knife kind of blended in with the rest of the painting. I did not know what to do about this, I felt that if I left it, it would have looked bad, but if I added a different color it too would have looked bad. I blended a mixture of white and yellow to create a bright yellow/white color and then proceeded to paint around the border of the handle. The knife now clearly is separate from the rest of the painting. Problem solved. This project was long, time consuming, and at some points down right frustrating, but in the end, I think it came out good.