Interim crit

More visual research/inspiration

These are some sciencey poster designs by illustrator and designer Pete Oswald for Flint's bedroom in Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. I love how fun/eye catching they look, how the scientists are stylised but you can still recognise them and how textured these posters are. I want my outcomes to be quite stylised and fun/playful like these posters - makes me want to try and stylise Marie Curie in her laboratory, busy experimenting or holding a lab glassware full of her glowing radium potion or proudly showing her Nobel Prizes (or something like that).

Found this in a book, but I forgot the name of it:

Marie Curie's side profile made out of the letters in her name?

I love this side profile by Adam Hancher, its so simple yet it is so charming. The colours all compliment each other and again, like Oswald's work, I am loving the painterly texture he's added to his clean cut shapes which gives it this really nice handcrafted quality. It looks like he's done the pattern shapes on illustrator/with the pen tool because its looks so smooth and clean and then added the texture on photoshop. I also quite like this idea for the poster - profile of Marie Curie with patterns of things associated with her, inside it. I shall have to give both Oswald and Hancher's art style a try.

I saw these playing card designs and I thought they would look quite nice as stamps. Really simple but they also look really attractive - maybe I could do something similar but with things that are related to Marie Curie instead of the hearts and clubs etc. and use the Marie Curie Cancer Care colour palette to keep it looking like a set with the postcards?

Trying out idea

These look quite dull to be quite honest - need to inject some x factor to it! maybe the colours are all wrong? change colour palettes? maybe the type is dull? maybe I've just not got the eye for screen print based work? maybe I need to work on the big piece first (poster) so things can just be pulled out from it, so all of the pieces link in together.

Marie Curie Ideas

Initial ideas:

Quotes - Type as image?

Matthew Taylor Wilson - this would be really easy to screen print

I like the simplicity of these designs - design and colour palette wise in the Pivot one. I also like the use of watercolour.

Crit:

Making my first repeat pattern!

My brain is beginning to tire from doing non stop uni work so I decided to take a break and learn how to make a repeat pattern! I followed this really easy guide by Kristyna Baczynski who came and gave us a lecture about her work a couple weeks back:

 I turned the grid on so it divides it equally into four

Turned the snap to guide on and I selected each corner and moved it to the opposite diagonal corner

then filled in the gap with more hearts!

 Voila!

Tried it out on twitter and it works! yay! Although, there are still some imperfections as you can see on the bottom left where there is a white line going through the hearts. This is probably because when I moved this corner of the pattern, I didn't meet the guides and document edges perfectly - I kind of rushed it a little bit because I was excited to get it done and see the result. Next time I need to take more care when doing this bit for that seamless appearance. Though on the more positive side, I have really enjoyed learning how to do this and quite excited to employ this into future work! maybe make some patterned fabric (which my mum really wants me to do, so she can make it into things) or wrapping paper, the list could go on! How exciting!

Marie Curie Cancer Care

Marie Curie Cancer Care is a registered charitable organisation in the United Kingdom, which provides nursing care, without charge, to terminally ill people at home, and in hospices.

Named after the scientist Marie Curie who was born in 1867 in Poland because she discovered radium, which was for many years used in a treatment for cancer called radiotherapy.

Marie Curie's life as a scientist was one which flourished because of her ability to observe, deduce and predict. She is also arguably the first woman to make such a significant contribution to science. Marie Curie Cancer Care is proud to be named in honour of her.

Why is the daffodil the Marie Curie Cancer Care symbol?


The Marie Curie Memorial Foundation, now Marie Curie Cancer Care, was created in 1948 at the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead, England. Like other cancer foundation in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Japan, they chose the daffodil as a symbol of hope. Their annual March fundraiser, The Great Daffodil Appeal has raised over 72 million pounds for patient services and research since since it was started in 1986. 


from other sources:

The logo for the Canadian Cancer Society is the daffodil. The flower had served as a symbol of cancer awareness since the 1950s, when volunteers for the Society organised a fundraising tea in Toronto; the volunteers used daffodils to decorate the tables, as they thought it would create hope that cancer could be beaten. As the first flower of spring, the daffodil became a symbol of hope in the fight against cancer.

Marie Curie Cancer Care colour palette

Radium

Alkaline earth metal, white but tarnishes black upon exposure to air, luminesces, decomposes in water, emits radioactive radon gas, disintegrated radioactively until it reaches stable lead, radiological hazard, α, β, and γ emitter, exposure to radium can cause cancer and other body disorders. Radium is over a million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium.

Uses of Radium:

Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girl" dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks. The dial painters routinely licked their brushes to give them a fine point, thereby ingesting radium. Their exposure to radium caused serious health effects which included sores, anemia, and bone cancer. This is because radium is treated as calcium by the body, and deposited in the bones, where radioactivity degrades marrow and can mutate bone cells.

Radium was once an additive in products such as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food items due to its supposed curative powers. Such products soon fell out of vogue and were prohibited by authorities in many countries after it was discovered they could have serious adverse health effects.

Radium (usually in the form of radium chloride) was used in medicine to produce radon gas which in turn was used as a cancer treatment; for example, several of these radon sources were used in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. The isotope 223Ra (under the trade name Xofigo) was approved by the FDA in 2013 for use in medicine as a cancer treatment of bone metastasis.

Hazard symbols to note:

 Radioactive and Biohazard sign

Radiation danger and Toxic sign

The hazard symbol for carcinogenic chemicals. A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that is an agent directly involved in causing cancer.

Follow Aghnia Mardiyah's board Radium advertising on Pinterest.

This kind of vintage aesthetic for brief?

Polonium

Polonium has more isotopes than any other element, all of which are radioactive. Polonium is highly dangerous and has no biological role. The main hazard is its intense radioactivity (as an alpha emitter), which makes it very difficult to handle safely. Even in microgram amounts, handling ²¹⁰Po is extremely dangerous. Alpha particles emitted by polonium will damage organic tissue easily if polonium is ingested, inhaled, or absorbed, although they do not penetrate the epidermis and hence are not hazardous as long as the alpha particles remain outside of the body.

The presence of polonium in tobacco smoke has been known since the early 1960s. Some of the world's biggest tobacco firms researched ways to remove the substance—to no avail—over a 40-year period but never published the results.

Radioactive polonium-210 contained in phosphate fertilizers is absorbed by the roots of plants (such as tobacco) and stored in its tissues.Tobacco plants fertilized by rock phosphates contain polonium-210, which emits alpha radiation estimated to cause about 11,700 lung cancer deaths annually worldwide. Polonium is also found in the food chain, especially in seafood.

Polonium can be used to eliminate static electricity in machinery that is caused by processes such as the rolling of paper, wire or sheet metal, although other materials which emit beta particles are more commonly used for this purpose. Polonium is also used in brushes for removing dust from photographic films, although the polonium must be carefully sealed to protect the user from contamination.

Marie Curie further research

Follow Aghnia Mardiyah's board Marie Curie on Pinterest.

Follow Aghnia Mardiyah's board Laboratory on Pinterest.

Follow Aghnia Mardiyah's board Victorian Fashion on Pinterest.

In early June 1903 both Curies were invited to London as guests of the prestigious Royal Institution. Her sister Bronya made the difficult trip from Poland to celebrate Marie's academic triumph. 

Bronya had insisted that the first woman to receive a doctorate in France should acknowledge the special event by wearing a new dress. Characteristically, Marie chose a black dress. Like the navy wedding outfit she had chosen eight years earlier, the new dress could be worn in the lab without fear of stains.

The Curies became research workers at the School of Chemistry and Physics in Paris and there they began their pioneering work into invisible rays given off by uranium.

Marie was convinced she had found a new chemical element - other scientists doubted her results.

Pierre and Marie Curie set about working to search for the unknown element. Eventually, they extracted a black powder 330 times more radioactive than uranium, which they called polonium. Polonium was a new chemical element, atomic number 84. When the Curies investigated further, they found that the liquid left behind after they had extracted polonium was still extremely radioactive.

In 1898, the Curies published strong evidence supporting the existence of the new element - which they called radium - but they still had no sample of it. Marie set about processing the pitchblende to extract the tiny quantities of radium. This involved working on a much larger scale than before, with 20 kg batches of the mineral - grinding, dissolving, filtering, precipitating, collecting, redissolving, crystallising and recrystallising. 

The work was heavy and physically demanding - and involved dangers the Curies did not appreciate. During this time they began to feel sick and physically exhausted; today we can attribute their ill-health to the early symptoms of radiation sickness. At the time they persevered in ignorance of the risks, often with raw and inflamed hands because they were continually handling highly radioactive material.

In 1902 Marie eventually isolated radium (as radium chloride), determining its atomic weight as 225.93. The journey to the discovery had been long and arduous.

Marie Curie was twice awarded the Nobel Prize: for Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. She died in 1934.

Marie's Nobel prize

Marie Curie quotes

More general quotes:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” 

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” 

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a genaral responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think can be most useful.” 

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

More sciencey quotes:

“A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. ” 

“All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.” 

“We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for mankind. ” 

“I am one of those who think, like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.” 

"I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory."

"I am among those who think that science has great beauty."

source Wikiquote

People of Note

I think I am going to choose Marie Curie as she sounds more interesting to me.

Looking for the Sun

Colour, Value and Notan - Figure and object exercise:-

Develop a colour illustration through a series of roughs that includes a figure and an object. Consider depth, frame, viewpoint, colour and balance/contrast of values. Keep it simple.

Spring has sprung, but the sun is still a little timid:-

(Value: bottom right)

Always looking for ways to add texture to my work - This method by the awesome Victoria Ying and Mike Yamada:

I used the texture I made a while ago to give the overall image that brushy texture. Colour palette: warm vs cool colours

For this task I decided to challenge myself to draw from a different angle than what I usually go for because I sometimes find it difficult to do so. I think I have done this quite well, although I'm still not sure whether I've drawn the legs right/in the right position - I didn't use any photo references and I feel like the left leg is a little short (or the right, too long), but when I make it a little longer, it didn't look right either - from this we can conclude that I need more practise with drawing the human figure from different angles and perspectives - or maybe its because I've just done less thumbnailing for this than I have done for the other tasks? I think I could have done better if I had drawn it a couple more times.

I also decided to try and create something completely lineless - so to practise/focus more on shape and texture. I really love this look and you'll be sure to find me employing this to my work in the future! I also want to make this into a gif, so the rain/droplets move - so keep an eye out :)

I decided to play around some more with the colour and value (middle row, right)

I quite like both red and yellow. I think the greyscale of the yellow is better than the greyscale of the red because you can really see the contrast in values - making the person (umbrella and boots) lighter, turns it more into a focus subject as it pops out a bit more. But with the colour version, if I were to choose between the yellow or the red, I think I would choose the red because I think the yellow is actually a little bright/energetic, might give people a bit of a headache - I feel like there is also too much of this yellow, it's kind of overwhelming. With the red, I think it goes better because the colour isn't that far off, in the colour wheel, from the blue of the road - because the blue is a slightly richer, warmer blue in my opinion. So it isn't really as overpowering as the yellow, even when the same amount of the colour is used. Instead, it kind of compliments it quite well. However, I think if we were to tone down the yellow just a little, make it calmer/less energetic, I think it would look really nice as well.

Technique to note - Depth and value used in Bambi: