Connotative Image Making

If you've been following my blog recently, you'll know that I am toning my visual muscles with a MOOC from CALARTS called Fundamentals of Graphic Design. The second optional assignment was to take the household object we had worked with in the previous assignment and create three connotative representations. Here are mine:

I frequently look through magazines etc and wonder at the illustrations used in articles. How to they come up with their ideas? It was mysterious. This project however 'shed some light' - excuse the pun - on the thoughts and experiments illustrators might go through. I always thought about the concept before the image or how images might match the message. This course is teaching me to look at images first and the meanings we impose upon as secondary. This is an idea or process that I think I  need to explore further.

I don't believe all three of these images are that effective of conveying my messages but I did enjoy the practice. So much so that I would like to attempt the first two assignments with other objects as well as continue to explore the lamp image.