Olivia
Parton
Graphic Design CODA Portfolio
Welcome! My name is Olivia Parton and I am currently a second year student at North Carolina State University in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. I use visual art to channel my creativity and present ideas. I've always loved creating art, so I decided that I want to major in a field where I can continue to pursue my passion while opening doors across different disciplines: Graphic Design. I want to brand and create work that leaves an impression on society, whether that be a color corporate logo, an eye-catching political advertisement, or unique creatures and characters for television and video games, which is what I ultimately hope to do.
(Original Drawing)
One of my childhood friends is Type 1 Diabetic and participates in the JDRF One Walk in support of T1D with a group of friends and family. For the 2016 walk, she asked me to make a t-shirt design for her group. She told me a few things she wanted me to include in the design: the group name (Sydney Rae’s Rebels), JDRF, and her slogan “nobody can drag me down”. The composition and style of the design was up to me, and the original was a digital drawing on my iPad. I wanted all the elements to fit together, so nothing seemed out of place and the design was cohesive.
Sydney Rae's Rebels (2016)
This is a ballpoint pen drawing of the lead singer of Twenty One Pilots, Tyler Joseph. I identified with and related a lot to the lyrics about his experiences with mental illness, and the music helped me a lot through my own experiences. I wanted the shadow of these experiences to show through in his eyes and facial expression in this portrait. I used ballpoint pen because it gives a rougher and darker look to the shading, which coincides with the expression he is evoking.
Tyler Joseph (2017)
“Blurryface” is a charcoal drawing on black paper that is an ode to the 2015 album of the same name by Twenty One Pilots. The majority of Twenty One Pilots’ music is about the lead singer, Tyler Joseph's battle with mental illness. “Blurryface”, as described by Joseph, is a darker, weaker side of him that personifies his insecurities and perpetuates his inner turmoil. This piece is a depiction of my own “Blurryface”. It represents the dark, strong, unidentified voice in my mind associated with my (previous) depression and anorexia, a voice that would say horrible things to me and pulled me deeper into my illness, which strengthened the voice. I intended this piece to evoke feelings of fear, uncertainty, and discomfort, the same feelings the voice gave me. I kept the composition dark throughout to represent how inescapable the dark void that mental illness creates can feel.
Blurryface (2018)
Anxiety (2018)
This watercolor portrait was part of a series of pieces I made my senior year of high school, all based on emotion (“Blurryface” and "Depression" were also from this series). The emotion portrayed in this painting is anxiety and fear, which I connected with my own lifelong struggles with anxiety. I used watercolor because I wanted the portrait to have some brightness to it and to create the illusion of streaks of tears on the woman’s face. I kept the background dark because it contributes to the woman’s fear as it surrounds and engulfs her, like I would sometimes feel when my dark thoughts invaded and persisted in my mind.
Depression (2018)
Coinciding with the “Anxiety” watercolor painting, this acrylic painting on wood panel depicts sadness and depression. I connected this, again, to my own long battle with major depressive disorder. I wanted this painting to have a dark background for the same reason as the watercolor, to mimic the feeling of the emotions overcoming the subject. Unlike the watercolor, however, I wanted the subject to remain dark as well, so the darkness of the sadness seems to overcome him, becoming a part of him. This is how I felt in the height of my depression. I would feel as though it was inescapable and thought it would overcome me before I would be able to overcome it.
(Original Drawing)
Rowdy Leaf is a local band from NC. The band hosted a t-shirt design contest in 2018, and my tree design won. The original tree was drawn in gel pen on sketchbook paper. I chose a bonsai-like tree because of “Leaf” in the band name and the dark, swirling trunk and branches remind me of their music style.
Rowdy Leaf (2018)
“Mike Ehrmantraut” is a black and white charcoal portrait on 9x12 black paper of the Breaking Bad character portrayed by Jonathan Banks. I used charcoal because I wanted it to be as realistic and striking as possible, and I find that charcoal is the medium in which I am able to capture the most detail, which was important in capturing his features and expression. I did mainly white charcoal on black paper because it gives the image the intensity and emphasis I wanted it to have. Mike Ehrmantraut was my favorite character mainly for his complexity. He was witty, cunning, tough, hardworking, and disciplined, yet had a softer side that showed he was caring, loyal, and just. The combination of these traits made for an overall wise and sophisticated character, and I wanted to portray him as such in this portrait.
Mike Ehrmantraut (2019)
This is an iPad digital drawing. “Lebensmüde” is a German word that translates to “life-tired”, or being weary or fed up with life. The skull, symbolizing death, has its mouth wide open as if to be screaming out of distress. It looks and leans away from the darkness into the light, symbolizing the effort to find hope and peace when darkness has a hold on you. The erratic lines in the skull represent the myriad of invasive and chaotic thoughts associated with being life-tired.
Lebensmüde (2019)
This is a sequence of five 6x6 patterns all based on balance. I often draw patterns and mandalas made up of random lines and shapes for stress relief, and I like to keep them balanced with the weight of all the shapes and lines dispersed equally throughout. It can sometimes be a challenge to make a balanced pattern that doesn’t seem repetitive or predictable, so I try to make them all look completely different from each other. Each pattern is cut out of a single piece of black paper, so I had to design each one strategically in order to keep it all in one piece. I drew several patterns and picked these 5 that I thought looked best together, and ordered them so that the sequence as a whole had balance as well.
Abstract Balance (2019)
I have always loved to design creatures, and have done so since elementary school. I like to make them all unique, so none of them look similar to other ones I’ve drawn or seen before. I do not have much of a process I go through when designing them, often I just start drawing and see what becomes of it. Other times I have an idea for a feature I want to accentuate (such as a facial feature or body shape), and draw the rest of the creature to compliment it. I designed the creatures shown to look like they come from the same environment. They are all creepy and dark with distinctive expressions. I shaded them by stippling (using a Micron pen), which gives an interesting effect that regular shading could not replicate, and gives them all something distinctive in common so they fit well together.