DIGITAL COLLAGE
Lost
91.44 cm x 60.96 cm
March 23, 2018
Exhibition Text:
Lost is a representation of the struggle one experiences, when they are deprived of support and become emotionally unstable due to societal norms and perceptions regarding certain issues. Lost was inspired from artists such as Rene Magritte, Jose Roosevelt, and kathe Kollwitz.
Lost
91.44 cm x 60.96 cm
March 23, 2018
Exhibition Text:
Lost is a representation of the struggle one experiences, when they are deprived of support and become emotionally unstable due to societal norms and perceptions regarding certain issues. Lost was inspired from artists such as Rene Magritte, Jose Roosevelt, and kathe Kollwitz.
Critical Investigation:
The theme of lost dealt with isolation and how nature is one way of coping with such an emotion. This idea lead me towards researching artists that were well known for their representation of nature. One prominent artist that influenced my digital collage was Jose Roosevelt. I admired how he utilized elements of nature to replace certain features of humans. Also, there was a variation in the textures Jose Roosevelt presented, which became symbolic in my piece towards my theme. I was also inspired by Rene Magritte's work due to his love for surrealism. His work was composed of unrealistic but deep components. He used real elements to make an imaginative visual. This aspect needed to be in my piece for the theme to be more prominent. Kathe Kollwitz was a significant component of Lost, because of the intensity of the tragic events presented in her work. I admired the value her art was composed of, because the atmosphere appeared to be demoralizing.
PLANNING:
Figure Dressed with a Landscape was painted by Jose Roosevelt. Jose Roosevelt was a painter from Brazil and one of his biggest inspirations was Salvador Dali's work. I was inspired by the dark background in this piece, because it provided the rest of the painting with emphasis. The landscape was vibrant due to the utilization of bright hues. Also the texture was smooth due to the blending technique Jose Roosevelt used. The structure of the tree was quite intricate in the piece. I was appreciative of the sharpness and the curves that the branches of the tree possessed. Due to this piece, I used trees to present my theme. In this painting the tree doesn't have leaves but is continuing to grow, which highlights its true potential and only one tree is presented. This made me reflect on my theme and it was strengthened because of Jose Roosevelt's portrayal of nature, hence I utilized a lot of trees in Lost. Also I liked how his outfit was outlined by the black background, I ended up outlining my body in Lost through a similar technique, but the outline had a lot of brightness to it due to the landscape in Figure Dressed with a Landscape.
The Happy Donor was painted by Rene Magritte. Rene Magritte was an artist who was well known for surrealism. Surrealism was an art movement in the 1920s, which dealt with the portrayal of violence, dreams, and desire. In the Happy Donor, I admired how there was an outline of a man's body around the trees, a house, and the sky with the moon. The texture of the piece was smooth, which provided the painting with a calm mood. The contrast in hues gave The Happy Donor emphasis, because the outline of the man became the center of attention due to the darkness in the background and dullness in the sky and grass presented within the structure of the male. I wanted Lost to have all those effects. Hence, I incorporated an outline of my head to shoulders and made the head dark black and shoulder areas bright yellow, so the outline didn't blend into the background of the piece. I also added contrast to my piece through the use of value. I had certain portions be extremely dark and others lighter.
Working Woman with an Earring was created by Kathe Kollwitz. Kathe Kollwitz was a well known artist in Germany and she was mostly popular for print making, sculptures, and drawings. In this piece the value provides a lot of emphasis on the face of the woman. According to her facial expressions she seems to have given up. There's movement in the piece due to the lines presented on the forehead and neck, which are most likely symbolic towards scars and or injuries. Also, the texture of the piece is both smooth and rough. But the roughness overpowers the smoothness, which leads one to assume that the individual has been through a lot. Due to these elements, the expression on my face in Lost were serious and monotonous. I didn't want to be extremely expressive, as Kathe Kollwitz's work always delivered the message efficiently through simplicity. Also, Working Woman with an earring didn't have variation in hues, hence I was strict with the amount of color I utilized for Lost. The very first thing that caught my attention in this piece were the female's eyes, hence I tried to make mine resemble hers and had them face in the same direction.
My first sketch was composed of my face with a bunch of leaves and cloud on it. I wanted to display an idea that even in isolation, nature is the only thing that's there in times of loneliness. As we all have some component of nature within this. This sketch was inspired from the works of Jose Roosevelt, Rene Magritte, and Kathe Kollwtiz. I really admired the positioning of my face and the direction of the eyes, but this sketch lacked trees. I really wanted to make the branches of the trees in my work prominent just like they were in the Figure Dressed in Landscape. But I liked the outline of my face, as it could merge with the background making the trees and plants more prominent. Even though I wanted my eyes to be positioned like The Woman with an Earring, I wanted to face forwards to give my face more emphasis. Also, the face occurs to be more dreamy than serious, hence, It needs to be slightly tweaked in order for my theme to be more prominent.
After having reflected on my first sketch, I was directed towards incorporating trees in Lost. Hence, I began to sketch a tree with intricate details. I really wanted each branch of the tree to be as pointy as possible, because it made its structure more accurate. Also, trees could be used to symbolize growth, which aligns with my theme. The reason being, when someone is experiencing solitude, they feel that life has nothing to offer to them, but trees could symbolize the knowledge individuals gain each day. I liked the overall make up of the tree and details were great as well. The reason being is, I wanted my piece to possess a peculiar, yet melancholic vibe and the extra details will help initiate that incentive, because the piece will be busy. There will too much going on, but it will not be distracting from the theme. I could've added more trees to the sketch, because not all of them will be the same. I am considering a tree similar to my sketch, in the background of my digital collage, while the one in the front or within the outline of my body will just have a lot of branches coming off of it. I want contrast in piece just like Rene Magritte, Jose Roosevelt, and Kathe Kollwitz incorporated from different techniques.
In this sketch, my primary focus were clouds. The reason being is, artists like Rene Magritte and Jose Roosevelt were known for their portrayal of surrealism through their art. Their art would always have imaginary components and after looking at the Figure Dressed in Landscape, I was inspired by the clouds presented in the piece. They could be a representation of all the good times and or memories fading, causing one to feel isolated and confused. I didn't want to make the clouds relevant as the trees, but I wanted to make them visible but faded. That's why in the sketch, the clouds weren't a closed a solid shape. They were all just flying away in a similar direction. The reason there were trees in the corner were, because that's where I wanted them to be positioned in the actual digital collage. I wanted transparency in the clouds, so my face and outline of my body could be slightly visible.
PROCESS: (Experimentation) Several photographs were considered for this project. I took a variety of pictures of clouds that occurred in alternating weather conditions. For example, when the sky was darker the clouds were more vibrant compared to a lighter colored sky. Also, since I live in a location with a lot of greenery, I ended up taking pictures of all sorts of trees. Some had more branches than the others, and some had leaves while others didn't. Sense I was aiming for a theme directed towards isolation, it made more sense to utilize trees without leaves. I wanted a serious picture of myself, hence I tried taking many, but they all seemed too fake. Hence, I ended up having my mom take candid pictures of me without me knowing to make the expression on my face as serious as possible. My initial plan was to utilize two different pictures of myself to highlight my past that indicated happiness, hence I took some pictures in which I seemed more confident. Once I was editing all of the pictures, I decided to make my body be the outline of the clouds and trees, but once I added the background the outline wasn't as prominent. Hence, I made my face more relevant in the picture, by lowering the opacity. Also, I decided to replicate the other picture and incorporated each one of them next to my initial picture. The setback about this decision was, it covered the meticulous detailing in the background and it became distracting towards my theme. Hence, I ended up getting rid of the extra picture. The positioning of the tree had to be within my body, so I positioned it on my mouth, but that ended up covering my whole face. Regarding that aspect, I ended up shifting the tree near the left hand corner of my body. PROCESS: The very first thing that needed to be completed for this project included the sketches. After I completed the sketches, I began to take some pictures of trees, the sky, clouds, and myself. I was longing for a serious and deep expression of myself, hence I ended up choosing a candid picture of myself. After having selected a base for my collage, I began to choose among the pictures that contained the most vibrant clouds, because they needed to be apparent in my piece. Once all of the pictures were selected, I downloaded them to my computer and opened them in different tabs on adobe Photoshop. After having done that, I decided to merge my layers. Merging layers meant making some elements appear inside my body and on the background. To begin this process, I used my base picture and shading the background with the paintbrush tool after adjusting opacity to 100% and brush size to 45% so it won't be too big or too small. Once I filled the whole background, I pressed the inverse button and backspace to get rid of the shading in the background. Once that was completed, I clicked on another tab and dragged the picture with the tree in order to merge it into the base picture. Once that happened all of my features faced, hence I lowered the opacity from 100% to somewhere around 50%. Then I adjusted the light, shade, and coloration of the overall picture to make sure I had a certain trend to follow. I gave the picture a very dark tone with a lot of value to get the theme of isolation across. The brightness of the picture was lower than the contrast and I used a color scheme of gold and black. Then I merged the photograph of clouds into my face to enhance the tone and detail. After this, I slightly adjusted the color of the clouds to present unity in my piece. I didn't want to change the color tone was the theme would've not been as effective as I was longing it to be. Once Incorporated the background in my piece, the picture became way too bright. Hence I had to adjust the color scheme again and ended up incorporating two outlines of my body with different trees. The same steps for these two pictures were utilized as for the base of my piece. I incorporated one on each side of my body, but it hid the background and became distracting. They were way too bright and too much was happening at once, hence I got rid of them. I fixed the color tone again to make sure everything looked orderly. |
REFLECTION:
During the composition of Lost there were many struggles and successful moments that I experienced. One of the things that I had a hard time with was being knowledgeable about the function of each of the tools. For instance, I didn't know that the size of the paint brush could be altered, hence I started off with a paint brush that had a size of 23% and it was difficult to fill up all of the space. I wasn't aware about the fact that we can move the layers on the side, hence if I didn't like the way things were orientated, I ended up starting over. This project made me delete my creations several times, because at times there were different color tones in one region and when I was trying to merge layers they'll go to the wrong pictures. Another struggle I came across during this project dealt with pasting some pictures onto the main collage. After time I tried pasting something it'll shrink to a very small size. It was hard to adjust the size of one picture when it was merged with the other, as the size of the whole piece ended up being affected. Now, one of the things that went well for me was adjusting the different shades and tones in the picture. I figured that out through the composition of a rough draft. I tried all all sorts of buttons that appeared on the side with all of the layers and finally figured which one I had to use. I was logical towards the level of brightness and contrast that my piece was polished with. The lasso tool was one of the few tools that I was efficient at. The reason being was all you had to do was outline the region you were working with. Also, if you messed up there was no need to start over as you just had to click on it once and restarted it for you. Some improvements I'll consider for the future would be to watch more videos that can help me advance my Photoshop skills. I should also learn about the tools that can help me enlarge the pictures that I pasted onto to the base of my digital collage.
ACT QUESTIONS:
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your art work?
Jose Roosevelt's work utilized many nature related aspects in his work, like trees, clouds, plants, and flowers. This element was presented in my work as I incorporated trees that were embedded in the background of the digital collage and near the right hand corner of the piece. I also had clouds merged on my face to provide it with a sense of value and to create a alternation in the shades presented on my face.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author ( from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author that wrote about Rene Magritte's work the Happy Donor didn't present his/her opinion regarding the topic in any manner. They were facts regarding the year in which the painting was made, the style of the painting and the genre. There was also other works presented, but there was no further description, which reveals that the author wanted the audience to have factual information pertaining the painting.
3.What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have learned that Rene Magritte experimented with many different art techniques and styles through his artwork. He worked with futurism, magical realism, surrealism, and neoclassicism, that's why there's an outline of a man showing the sky and the houses. This gives the audience a very imaginative feel and Rene Magritte was inspired by World War II and the separation of families impacted him negatively, hence his work usually tends to display individuals by themselves or in difficult situations.
4.What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central idea of my inspiration research dealt with loneliness. My goal was to demonstrate the outcome of being removed from certain aspects of life due to difference in opinion and ways of going things. That's why one of my inspirations was Kathe Kollwitz, as she was effective at displaying tragic incidents without having her work be too chaotic.
5.What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
The inferences that I made were that the world is very judgemental. They tend to jump to assumptions without knowing the reality of the situation. That's why I utilized Rene Magritte as an inspiration as he displaced a single man in his work, which reveals the perspective of only one individual rather than many.
Annotated Bibliography:
1. Artodyssey. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2009/09/jose-roosevelt-i-was-born-in-rio-de.html
2. Magritte, R. (1966, January 01). The happy donor, 1966 - Rene Magritte. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-happy-donor-1966
3. kathe Kollwitz Working Woman (With Earring). (n.d.). Retrieved march 23, 2018, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%A4the_Kollwitz_Working_Woman_(with_Earring)_(Arbeiterfrau_(mit_dem_Ohrring)).jpg4
4. Matteson Art. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://www.mattesonart.com/pre-surrealism-futurism-purism-and-dada.aspx