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 28 - September 1 2020
Photographing
The premise of this project is to work with light and shadows on objects, then to use photoshop and paint to enhance the image. I spent the first day exploring different objects and playing with their shadows and shapes, and the second day narrowing down on what I wanted my piece to look like. We needed to have at least three objects in our piece, one of which has a personal connection. That night, I went home and decided to look through my boxes of photography props, when I came across my artificial flowers. Mine were tattered and dying (reminding me that I needed to buy new ones) but it gave me the idea to go back to the boxes from Mr. Laurence's room and look through his artificial flowers. I found the beautiful purple flower (purple is one of my favorite colors) and decided to do an ultra zoom and create a very deep depth of field. I also loved the photo I took of the hand holding the lightbulb, partially because it took around ten minutes to stage, so I decided to make those my other two objects.
September 3 2020
Photoshop
Since my first project in this class was portrait, I wanted to switch it up and make a landscape piece. Mr. Laurence taught us different morphing techniques for our photos and then I eventually started playing around with the background. Around halfway into the lesson, I started to hate how it looked.
So I decided to start over, but this time I used the purple flower and made it HUGE behind the hand holding the bulb. I distorted the flower so that it leaned forward a bit more, almost like the audience is able to hold it. After this, I wanted to clean the edges of the hand that were still dark from the shadows from the original image that the quick selection tool wasn't able to pick up. I used the paintbrush tool and made it white with a low sharpness and a high blur so that it looked more natural. With this piece I am planning to make the backing an orange/yellow OR a dark green, and implement some more flowers and floral patterns.
September 7 2020
Paint, Oil Pastels, and Photoshop
Okay so to be totally honest... I hated the way this turned out. I'm really happy that we're able to experiment with different mediums in this class. This experimental phase of the project allowed me to figure out that I needed to change the composition of the images seen in the image underneath.
In this image I decided to import a different angle of the hand and distorted it so that the bulb is larger and the hand and wrist are smaller. I flipped it upside down to allow the bottom part of the image free to paint about with. I am planning to paint a rainbow acrylic base and use black oil pastels over it so that I can scratch the pastel layer in floral patterns to reveal the rainbow layer underneath it. I believe that this piece doesn't necessarily reveal my character but it does show how much I like flowers... I tend to act and dress more masculine than feminine, so I feel that flowers are the only stereotypically female part of my identity that I still like to look at and incorporate in my artwork.
September 9 2020
Paint, Oil Pastels, Scratching, Sketching, and Stencils
Today I had a little bit more direction in what I wanted to achieve, but I just couldn't get it in a spot that I was happy with. Sigh.
I started with using painter's tape to get the rigid lines from the lightbulb. Then I painted the area gold and used a black oil pastel to cover it. I then took one of the scratching tools and scratched grooves to reveal the gold paint underneath. After that I took the 005 pen and made looping lines in the shadow of the hand, and small circles in the shadow of the flower.
After that, I took a stencil with leaves and I took green, purple, and the remaining gold paint and sponged it on the artwork. I didn't think it through properly so it ended up carrying the excess paint and smudging it across the paper in a way that was completely unintentional and disappointing.
I really thought I had it this time. But, not all is lost! I really liked the idea I had with the pen, so I will recreate it in a neater way on my new piece. I also liked the stencil idea, but I think I will change what type of stencil it is so that it represents the feminine/masculine idea.
September 11 2020
Paint, Oil Pastels, Scratching, Stencils, and Photoshop
With the mistakes made in the previous renditions, I came to class with a clear image of what I wanted to achieve. I painted a pink/red/purple base. I then took a dark blue oil pastel and basically brushed it on upper part, and then took a turquoise oil pastel and brushed it on the bottom part, fading them into each other in the middle. I then made some scratches in the upper left corner. I then found some stencils that looked like pineapples when they were combined and sponged it on the right side of the paper, then stenciled a cool design on the left side. After that was done I didn't like the massive gap in the middle of the page, so I found an antique-style stencil which reminded me of henna, something that I get whenever I go back to India, and I found gears that reminded me of the work I do in technical theater, it's a lot of gears in the mix that all have to work together perfectly in order to produce the perfect piece. I then passed it to the teacher who scanned it in.
After it was scanned, I imported it into photoshop and uploaded the two objects. I realized that my iPhone wallpaper are the two hands from Michelangelo's artwork - The Creation of Adam - and I realized that the hand holding the lamp is in a similar position. So I copied the layer and positioned them to replicate The Creation of Adam. I then repositioned the flower, made it larger, and reduced to opacity to 80%. I printed it out again and now I'm going to work on the second dry medium (pen-work).
September 14 2020
Sketching
I read somewhere that if you make a mistake in art not to erase it, but to embrace it and exemplify it. I really need to stop listening to stuff I read online. I started off this sketch with long swiggle lines that were only meant to be on the shadowed area of the hand. I accidentally went all the way on the bottom row... so I decided to complete the whole hand that way, thinking it was a good idea. It was not. But I didn't want to start over, so I decided to wait until I got to class to figure it out.
September 16 2020
Photoshop and printing
After a long process of photoshop I finally came to the decision not to reprint my work, but try to fix it in photoshop. It worked! I dropped it in the folder and got it printed. The image below is the final JPEG product, and the video below that is what the image looks like when it is printed on photographic (gloss) paper.
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