Musical Reactions

In class we listened to nine songs by different artists and were told to draw what felt natural to us as a response. Shown below are my three favorite out of the nine. The first drawing is in response to a Dick Dale song, the second in response to a song by Jimmie Noone, and the last is in response to a song by Ry Cooder.

From this point we were asked to select one out of the three and create a piece based off the drawing. I chose my least favorite out of the three, the drawing in response to the Jimmie Noone song, because I felt the sketch by itself lacked visual appeal. The other two are interesting on their own so I wanted to create something greater than polka dots.

After selecting the drawing I was going to work with, my next step was to figure out how I was going to turn the polka dots into something more visually appealing. In addition to that, I wanted the piece to feel cohesive, which the original drawing lacked since all the dots were separate from each other. Thats when I thought, what's a better way to connect the dots all together than connect the dots?

One artists that inspired this project in particular is Josh Bryan. Josh Bryan makes beautiful portraits made out of what he calls "triangulations". A couple of his art pieces are shown below. You can check out more of his triangulations here.

After pulling inspiration from Bryan's work, I decided I wanted to focus on one specific facial feature, the lips. I then found a picture to use as the outline for the lips.

After I found this base picture, I laid it on top of the original Jimmie Noone response and changed the opacity. This served as a guide for the general shape of the lips.

From there, I began to connect the dots in triangular shapes.

I then changed the background to solid black to make the triangulations pop. Here is the end result.

Lastly, I created a mock poster using a stock image from Getty Images to showcase my piece in a real-life setting.