Please note that this is a post created for the Mixed Media and Digital Processes class, taken at Singapore American School during the academic year 2020-2021 in the first semester (Aug 2020-Dec 2020).
August 12 2020
Cutting, sticking, sketching
The first step of the Collected Collage project was to find images from mass media. I initially wanted my work to be about mental health, however, as the day progressed, so did my idea. I printed out the blue face first (completely on accident as my printer did not want to cooperate with the image) and then printed the black and white face (which was what the original image looked like). Afterwards, I looked for images of crashing waves to symbolize chaos and destruction (the links are below). I cut them out, and I stuck them to the paper (after taking the images and uploading them to my laptop). I cut out the image of the waves into a shape that arched over the person's eyebrows and into her forehead. Once everything was stuck down in the position that I was content with, I took some tracing paper and... got stuck. I had a really bad case of artist's block and was just staring at the empty tracing paper for the majority of the class until I came up with the narrative of my piece. Instead of focusing solely on mental illnesses, I wanted to open it up to domestic violence against women. That narrative and story got me out of the block and I was able to sketch out a basic plan.
On the blue face I wanted to represent the woman being entranced (hence the hypnotized eyes) by the abuser and forgiving them for all the acts of violence (the drips from her nose and mouth will be red as the intention is to have her bleeding). The wave in on her forehead was to show her inner struggles.
On the black and white face I wanted to represent the woman being silenced by her abuser, having her eyelids sewn shut and the scribbles on her forehead where to show confusion.
Future Steps:
1. Newspaper
A struggle I had was to figure out what I wanted the background to be. I initially thought to add hair, which is why you see the wavy lines, however I felt that that wasn't impactful enough. As you can see, I wrote "NEWSPAPER" on the tracing paper as a last-ditch effort, but it is what I am planning to do. I looked up 18 different newspaper articles online (the links are below) about domestic abuse, and am planning to rip and cut them out then stick them on the paper to add to the mass media element.
2. Photographic Element
For the photograph I am planning to take a photo of my friend's hand in the position like it is shutting the woman's mouth. I will then take it and then edit it over the mouth of the black and white image.
August 14-19 2020
Photographing, arranging, scanning, photoshop
I completed my Future Steps first, taking a photo of a clamped hand and an open hand, as well as printing newspaper articles about domestic abuse and clipping them up then arranging them on a paper. After I took these photos I imported them to Photoshop and began to edit them. First I took the newspaper collage and edited it to look like a canvas paper with thicker titles, taking down the levels to make it look darker, like a shadow. Then I placed the scanned version of the two faces on top of the edited newspaper bringing the opacity to 80% instead of 100% so we can still see some of the headlines through the faces, see below.
After this was created, I needed to incorporate the hands into the piece. After cutting them out and scanning them, I imported them to Photoshop, cleaned it up, and brought the levels all the way down so that the images were silhouettes. I imported them to the main project and brought the opacity of the open hand to 50% and the closed one to 90%.
August 21-26 2020
Scanning, photoshop, printing, painting, final printing
Today I scanned the image that I created on a draft of the faces from a previous class (see photo on the left). I found out that we were going to scan the painted version again and then import it to photoshop to adjust the levels and the final product will be printed on photo paper.
With this copy printed, I then filled in the spaces that I made from the white gel pen with red-purple acrylic paint using a thin paintbrush. Once it dried, I used a mix of orange and dark pink watercolor and splattered it on the artwork to give it the effect of blood splatter, then when that dried, I took an image and placed it into photoshop to increase the saturation which in turn made the image a bit more tangerine than I was expecting, but I ended up really liking the new effect as it definitely pronounced the blood from the mouth and made the splatter less translucent. The first image is the digital JPEG file of my final project and below that is how it looks when it was printed on photographic paper!
Links to the newspaper articles:
Links to the images:
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