Clock Creation

The other part of our first assignment is creating a clock design.

I approached this assignment by thinking about clocks, time and what it all means to me.

Figure 1: Brainstorm

Next I drew up some design roughs exploring some of these ideas. 

Figure 2: Design Roughs

I decided that I liked the night and day/ sun and moon themes better, and I also thought that these types of designs lent themselves to my earlier questions, what is time and does it really exist?

I decided to develop these concepts further.

Figure 3: Design Development

Of these designs I found that the hourglass and the knot appealed to me most.  I created a day and night scene to use on these designs.

Figure 4: Day

I used photos I took of the sky as reference for my cloud paintings, but I wanted them to have a stylised rather than realistic look.

Figure 5: Assorted Sky Reference

 For the night sky I used a combination of free creative commons star brushes and my own custom brushes.

Figure 6: Night

All of the sky and mis-shapen clocks reminded me of the work of both Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali two famous surrealist painters.  Dali's painting, "The Persistence of Memory" is very famous and today clocks are manufactured to look like the dropping clocks shown in this painting.   

Magritte is often associated with his use of the sky within his paintings.

Figure 7: The Persistence of Memory.  Salvador Dali. 1931.  Oil on Canvas.  24cm x33cm. Museum of Modern Art.

Figure 8: The Entrance. Rene Magritte. 1931. 20 x 28 inch. Retrieved from http://echostains.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/happy-birthday-rene-magritte/  

These artists could serve as extra inspiration for my designs.

Figure 9: Knot Clock Design

Further exploration of the knot concept lead to the above design.  I used the warp tool in Photoshop to manipulated my Day and Night imagery into the shape of the knot.  While I liked the design I wasn't sure that it was exactly what I was after.  I considered placing something in the middle of the design and experimented with sun and moon designs like the one below, but they made the piece look too cluttered.

Figure 10: Metal Sun design

I decided that the hourglass was a really interesting concept so worked on this design more.  Once again I used the warp tool on the day and night imagery to create the appearance that they were being sucked through the hourglass.  I wanted the design to be quite graphic and simple in its linework.  To create the effect of glass I applied a black hourglass shape over the skies and lowered the transparency.  I gave it a darker rim, like seen on glass containers and added some highlights.

Finally I added a subtle lens flair to the skies.  This is something I normally avoid as it can look very tacky but in this case I feel that it enhances the style.  

Figure 11: Final Clock Design