Abstract Painted Paper Collages

I was looking through some of my old, and some slightly less old, painted paper collages this weekend, just to see if I still like them. Turns out I do, and very much so. You know how sometimes you create something, really loving it at the time, only to look at it a year later and think to yourself "what was I thinking?" Well, this was not one of those moments.
I started making such collages for an assignment for one of my painting courses in college, and I was having a really hard time at first. I seemed to be doing the same thing over and over, and I was struggling with creating engaging compositions that were not representative. My professor encouraged me to try harder, to let go, to play around with the shapes and colors, and I ended up completely loving it. At the end of the class I told my professor that I see more of myself in these abstracts than in any of the other landscape or still life work that I did before. I still believe that.
Anyway, I have about twenty seven collages that I like, both new and old, and I think that's a good number. I am thinking of bringing that number up to 40 or 50; they will make a good collection for an art show along with something like 15 bigger oil pieces. So here are some sneak peaks of the collages I have so far:

And by the way, how annoying is it that there is no rubber cement in Europe - I mean, what's up with that?! Supposedly it's something to do with hazardous materials, but it just sucks. There's no other kind of glue better for making these collages than rubber cement.

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Pale Light Summer Abstract

Here is another abstract that I painted a few weeks ago, which turned out quite nicely, I think. I really like the colors in this one; they kind of remind me of a pale yellow beach with light blue and grey pebbles and clear water. I want to be in a place like that right about now, actually. So far this summer has been tough on me, and a vacation seems far away and uncertain. I'm trying to decompress whenever I can, but I'm still stressed from all the stuff I'm trying to juggle at the same time. Usually I find summers deliciously slow, with hot afternoons and iced tea, pale sunsets and warm nights, but this year I'm finding myself fast forwarding through the days like a crazy person. There's no time to stop and enjoy the season. I'm trying to work on slowing down a little, but, at the same time, I would like to finish my MBA as fast as possible. Then I'll be done with my education - yey! I'll just study fun stuff after that, like painting or photography :) Oh, I'm sooo looking forward to that time! In the meantime, enjoy my newest painting:

Red Abstract

I'm trying to find time in my insane schedule to paint more, but it doesn't always work out. Lately I've been spending most of my weekends sleeping - that's how exhausted I am at the end of the work week. Still, I am trying to work up to having enough paintings and collages for an art show and, perhaps, an Etsy shop. Here is one of my latest abstracts, very red and fiery. I'll be coming up with names when I have enough paintings, and that's always a very fun task for me.

Highlights from Sofia Design Week 2012: Numen/For Use

Would you call it architecture, design, art, or installation? No matter how you classify the work of Numen/For Use, you would most likely say that it's completely awesome. At least that's what I would say. I'm sure if some critic read what I just wrote, they would frown at the word "awesome" and demand a more sophisticate way of saying the same thing, but for us regular bloggers "awesome" would have to do.

Numen/For Use are, or were, mostly known for their furniture design, but I was very impressed by their installations and theater set design. I'll start with the installations, since they have the most "fun factor" and they completely astound with the simple fact that they are done with nothing more than....wait for it....TAPE! Yes, you heard that right - tape!

The Croatian-Austrian design collective makes amazing architecture-like structures from tape, and these structures go on to become fun-filled playgrounds for the young and old alike. I never would have thought to do anything with tape, but here these people are, making architectonic forms out of the material. The fact that tape is elastic and just gradually stretches or bends if it has to carry heavier loads instead of breaking makes it perfect for people roaming the structure, like you can see on the photos below (the photos are all from the Numen/For Use website - no copyright infringement is intended). The photos are from installations done in Melbourne and Frankfurt. I would have loved to play around in installations like these. How great would it have been to have something like this in Sofia?!

 
Apart from the tape installations, I definitely found Numen/For Use's theater set design very intriguing. You can look at their website for all of their projects, including a set made all of glass and mirrors, but here I'm just going to show you one of their projects, which made a particularly strong impression on me. Again, I think what I was most impressed about was the fact that very simple tools were used to create a very original effect. For a theater production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Zagreb, Numen/For Use created a set made pretty much entirely out of curtains. They played around with the idea that the curtain is what separates the real world in the theater from the imaginary, fantasy world. Here they cut the red curtain into strips, so that they could achieve a smooth and very magical transition between the real world and the story, as well as between the city and the woods, where all the magic and confusion in the play happens. The curtains turn into magically lit trees, with people and fairy creatures moving in, out, around and above, appearing and disappearing like they are truly a part of a dream. Watch the video below and you'll see what I mean.

Head over to the website www.numen.eu/ to enjoy more projects like these.
All photos in these post feature projects by Numen/For Use and belong to them.

Highlights from the Sofia Design Week Forum 2012: Raw Edges Design Studio

It’s that time of the year again! No, it’s not Christmas…It’s Sofia Design Week!

I attended the Sofia Design Week Forum for the first time last year, and I was blown away by some really great presentations, unique projects, and lots and lots of creative design. That’s why this year I was really looking forward to attending the forum again. Unfortunately, I had a Marketing exam scheduled on one of the forum days, so I missed something like three lectures. I was quite annoyed by this development, as you can imagine. Oh well, what can you do…

Anyway, last year I wrote two posts describing some of the interesting ideas and designs that I saw (which you can read here and here), but since I missed some lectures this year, I thought that this time I would do a series of posts highlighting some of the most imaginative and exciting things from what I did see.

 I thought I’d dedicate this first post to Raw Edges Design Studio, a design collaboration that I actually knew of before the forum. In case you don’t know who they are, they are the ones that made the gorgeous parquet floors shown below for Established & Sons, Stella McCartney stores and Design Miami/Basel Global Forum for Design. These beautiful floors in lush colors are featured pretty much on every design blog I’ve read, and it was a real delight to be able to have Yael Mer and Shay Akalay as speakers in this year’s forum.

http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear

 

I found quite a lot of their projects very interesting, such as The Pond and Plaid Bench, which you can see on their website. I’ve included a photo of the benches below as well (© 2012 Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay). I am fond of their bright color palette, which is close to what I use in my jewelry and abstract art. I also love their Hole In The Floor shelves for books, which you can also see below. These look simply adorable to a bookworm like me.
http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyearhttp://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear

Photos from http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear No copyright infringement is intended. All photos feature work by Raw Edges Design Studio.

ONE COMPANY - MANY MANY LOGOS

OK, I guess I really enjoy logo design. I had to design a logo for a new fast food place called "Lucky Star" and I sort of went overboard. I gave them nine pages of logos. Yeah, crazy.
It's just that I had some ideas bouncing around in my head, and when I started putting them on paper and on the computer screen, I got more ideas, and I ended up churning out a bunch of different designs. Of course, some are simpler than others, but since the owners didn't really give us any direction, I decided not to discount any ideas.
I am kind of attached to the ones with the forks and the ones where someone took a bite out of the star :) I think those turned out pretty great :) Anyway, check them out below:

 

CONSTRUCTION FIRM LOGO

I've been meaning to write a post about the logo I designed for my dad's company for more than a year now, but for some reason I always skipped over it in favor of some other topic. I actually designed the logo as a birthday present to him one year because his old logo was very old-fashioned and with a crazy blue and yellow flashy combination of colors. In reality, just by looking at his old logo, you wouldn't be able to recognize that the firm has anything to do with construction. This is why I set out to design something new and fresh for him.

I started by just jotting down some ideas and doodling on a scrap of paper to come up with some ideas for the logo. Sorry for the bad quality of the photo, but it is the only one I have of my doodles, and it will do for the purpose of this post.


I was also thinking of maybe having a Bulgarian and English version of the logo, but in the end, I decided against it.

I decided on the design idea that seemed the most appropriate for the business and that looked cleanest in terms of lines and shapes. My goal was to create a logo that had a clean and modern look. Then I played with some colors in order to decide whether the logo should have one or two colors. I used colors that would suggest materials used in construction, such as grey, brown and black, and I used different greens, in part as a symbol of land and in part to bring some "freshness"to the design.



At this point I showed the designs to my dad, we discussed them, and he decided on a design of brown and green letters. The one-color logos looked interesting to me because the letters P and C blended together to create on structure, but the two-color logos were perhaps a bit better in terms of readability.

Finally, I prepared some designs for his business cards. He liked the vertical designs, so these were the ones we got printed.