Digital Collage
To Subconsciously Ignore and Forget 61 cm x 91 cm Digital Collage September 2018 Exhibition Text: To Subconsciously Ignore and Forget exploits the mind's tendency to focus on the dramatic features of a piece, and disregard the rest. Influenced by my loathing habit to overlook the smallest, yet significant details in art work, the purpose of this piece is for the viewer to realize that their own subconscious mind is attempting to ignore the translucent portrait over it multi-colored replica. Primarily inspired by the music video This is America by Donald Glover, Alexandra Garant and Juxtaposition. Adobe Photoshop CS6 used to compose this piece. |
Meaning
My piece exploits the mind's tendency to focus on the colorful or unnatural features of a piece, and disregard the rest. Growing up, I had the tendency to overlook the meaning behind things that happen in my life, let it be the purpose of my homework or the reason my parents divorce. Growing up, I wanted a life without any troubles, a life that meant I had everything I wished for and a life that meant my family would live happily. At that time, I was unable to comprehend that such a world does not exist. I did not understand that there was a world that people feared that they would not live to see tomorrow. I would forget that there are others who are being regarded are vermin, and are dying, when I complain about almost nothing. How could I complain about something so small, when there are people who are suffering? I shut myself up. As my guilt rose after every complaint I had, I turned to music. It was when I watched the music video from Donald Glover's (also known as Childish Gambino) This is America, I got confused and did not immediately recognize the theme: American youth tend to turn to social media to distract themselves from violence and injustices seen in the country. After watching the video a few times, I noticed I was very distracted by the music. It was not until I watched the video several times did I get whiplashed, I initially realized that I, myself, do that all of the time. I wanted to change the cycle. I wanted to use art to convey to spread the word rather than let this idea die, like hearing about another victim of violence.
Inspiration
Critical Investigation
The piece I was primarily inspired by was Donald Glover's (Childish Gambino) This is America. Although it is a music video, I was inspired by its technique to convey its message: the use of eccentric dance moves and music to distract viewers from the violence displayed in the video. From this video, I was inspired to make component of my piece overshadow the other, otherwise distracting the viewer by making it more dramatic than the other. "The song's visual starts with this striking juxtaposition...Glover alternates between tribal dances and viral dances while flashing an exaggerated minstrel-like smile..." (Cornish & Evstatieva 2018). His use of juxtaposition moved me to attempt to do the same. This piece also helped me realize that I should not drown my pity through time, but instead use art to express it.
A visual artist I was mainly inspired by was French Canadian artist Alex Garant. Alex Garant is "Contemporary Figurative Op Art, [because] her oil paintings offer a graphic quality combined with traditional portrait techniques" (Garant 2018). After having suffered a heart attack in 2012, the experience changed how she viewed the world, which subsequently influenced her art (Garant 2018). When composing the pieces, Garant describes them as “...deeply personal...” (Milosevic 2016). "The way she creates makes her painting realistic, but surreal at the same time" (Milosevic 2016). The central theme around Garrant's piece were to exploit the mind's tendency to focus the hallucinations--like components of her piece. The use of contrasting, yet complementing colors, and her use of applying a transparent medium on top of an opaque medium to a visual illusion, were all components I incorporated into my piece. Although my piece did replace most of features of my face with lips, my piece and her pieces all had the surrealist visual illusion effect. Another artist I was inspired by was René Magritte. Having lived to witness the birth of Surrealism, Magritte composed paintings that consist of completely unrelated everyday objects. His use of juxtaposition is seen in his portrait, Son of Man. Placing the levitating apple in front of the man turns the otherwise static portrait of a man into a puzzling one. The painting draws the viewer’s eyes to the man’s face, which is evidence Magritte integrated movement into this piece. Although I used my face instead of a physical object for my piece, I integrated this principle into my piece by changing by making the lips multi-colored as well as replacing my eyes with two pairs of lips. |
Glover, Donald, This is America, 5 May 2018.
Magritte René, "Son of Man," 1964, oil on canvas, Private Collection.
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Planning
Sketches
One aspect I keep consistent in all of the sketches were that the sketches all were I did not want to modify the nose in anyway, since the nose was more vertically stretched than the eyes and lips. I consider the first sketch my "Eureka!" sketch, since I was most passionate about it, the sketch I have first drawn and it is the most similar to my product. The second sketch is the sketch I drew with hesitation: I believe that among the three sketches, I would least likely compose it because I did believe replacing the lips (symmetrical) with an eye (asymmetrical) would look visually appealing. The third sketch required that I understood all more photoshop features than I did at the time, so I opt it out.
Brainstorm and Outline of Steps
- Take picture for Background
- With the help of someone else, take pictures of self in static facial expression
- Take additional pictures of self with dramatic facial expressions
- Open Photoshop CS6, Select File, New, then set the put the Dimension for images, 24 in (61 cm) by 36 in (91cm), resolution 170.
- Open pictures
- Place portrait of self over background
- Replace selected facial feature with all the other facials features (expect nose)
- Change Color and Saturation of all components of piece
- Lastly, place another, unedited copy of portrait over the edited piece
- Lower Opacity, just enough to see colors, but to the point the unedited portrait is barely visible
Process/Techniques and ExperimentationExperimentation with Image CollectionBefore I began to formulate what the collage would look like, I took few photographs of my backyard and around my neighborhood, After taking the photos, I realized that only the ones taken of my backyard was high resolution, so I could not use the others.
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Once I decided to use portraits of myself, my younger brother helped take various photos of me with my phone in facial expressions, until I choose the one that had the best lighting. Afterwards, my brother helped me take pictures in dramatic facial expressions. (Lighting or lining the photo up was not an issue as long as lips was distinguishable.)
The image above is my favorite because it has the best lighting.
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Experimentation with Photoshop
Images Selected
Experimentation With Tools
After choosing the photos for the piece, I wanted to experiment with the functions in Photoshop. It took some time for me to understand them. Some of the functions I experimented on were:
Move Tool
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Quick Selection tool
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Hue/Saturation
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Auto-Color
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Healing Brush tool
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Free Transform
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Process
- Download images from Google Drive.
- Open Photoshop CS6, Select File > New, then set the put the Dimension for images, 24 in (61 cm) by 36 in (91 cm), resolution 170.
- Select File > Open
- Click the first image, while holding shift, then hover over the other images, right-click, then select Open which would then open new scripts for each image
- Using Quick Select and move, place picture of self over background.
- Replace facials features (expect nose) with lips. (Make sure the two pairs of lips that replace the eyes are from the same photo and are a reflection of each other.)
- Go to back picture of self, Quick Select face, then place it over the picture of self and background (This is done )
- While replacing facial features, change Color and Saturation of the five components of portrait. (The portrait is divided into five layers: lips where the left eye was, lips where the right eye was, lips that replaced stoic lips, the rest of face, and the headscarf)
- Again, Using Quick Select and move, place another, unedited copy of picture of self over the edited piece
- Lower Opacity to 61%, to the point the unedited portrait transparent and is barely noticeable (This adds a nostalgia effect to the piece.)
Final Product
Reflection & Critique
Glover, Donald, This is America, 5 May 2018.
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Compare
This is America
Reborn in Bloom
Son of Man
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Contrast
This is America
Reborn in Bloom
Son of Man
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My art, at its core, was based on my inspiration, especially the layering concept, the eccentric colors, the use of lips and the juxtaposition. Akin to a tree, my art work later branched out and grew with the help of my creativity and my message. I believe I did a great job using dramatic facial expression for my piece. In general, I am very pleased with the way my piece turned out, I can sense the message after analyzing it. My use of adding another non-modified portrait of self on top of the its modified replica, make me proud knowing that I have learned a lot more about Photoshop, layering medium on top on another medium as well as, juxtaposition. One part of my piece I could have improved on was the background. Half way into my piece, I wanted to change it (after lowering the saturation), but I did not how. I later salvaged it by applying Auto-color, which made background look better then its unmodified version. A challenge I had while creating this project was that prior to being introduced to photoshop, I had not experience with it, which made it extremely difficult for me to use, until I researched and create notes for it. Also, another challenge I did not know how to save my work correctly until September 4th, which on that day, I learned that I correctly save the work on the computer then, then upload it to Google Drive. Another challenge I had while was getting ideal pictures to use for the piece. (It took a lot of retakes to perfect the picture of self, which was to my brother's annoyance.) After patience was running low, so did the quality of pictures taken after that. (After evaluating the piece, I noticed the bad lighting did not negatively affect the piece.) A success I had with this project was learning how to take screenshots of my process, which helped me record my process. Another success I had with this project was that the work that after evaluating it, I could sense the unity all the elements the portrait has. Overall, I believe this is the best artwork I created to date.
ACT Response Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
Magritte's juxtaposition inspired me to add the unedited picture of self as a layer to my piece while Garrant's layering style inspired me to lower the layer's opacity to make the layer's transparency similar to her paintings. Glover's piece inspired me to
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Milosevic presented Garrant in a biographic way, while explaining her style and purpose.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I discovered that when people observe work from Garrant, Gray and Magritte, they tend not to look for the deeper meaning, but would rather judge their piece from an illustration mindset. It is only Glover have people searched for a deeper meaning.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my research was to find artworks that piece exploit the mind's tendency to focus unnatural or dramatic features of a piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Throughout my research I inferred that Garrant's heart attack inspired her to create her pieces, previous art movements along with Surrealism inspired Magritte.
Magritte's juxtaposition inspired me to add the unedited picture of self as a layer to my piece while Garrant's layering style inspired me to lower the layer's opacity to make the layer's transparency similar to her paintings. Glover's piece inspired me to
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Milosevic presented Garrant in a biographic way, while explaining her style and purpose.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I discovered that when people observe work from Garrant, Gray and Magritte, they tend not to look for the deeper meaning, but would rather judge their piece from an illustration mindset. It is only Glover have people searched for a deeper meaning.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my research was to find artworks that piece exploit the mind's tendency to focus unnatural or dramatic features of a piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Throughout my research I inferred that Garrant's heart attack inspired her to create her pieces, previous art movements along with Surrealism inspired Magritte.
Bibliography
Cornish, A. and Monika E. “Donald Glover's 'This Is America' Holds Ugly Truths To Be Self-Evident.” NPR, NPR, 7 May 2018, www.npr.org/2018/05/07/609150167/donald-glovers-this-is-america-holds-ugly-truths-to-be-self-evident.
Garant, A. (2016). Daydreaming I. [oil on canvas], retrieved from https://www.alexgarant.com/gallery.
Garant, A. (2016). Reborn in Bloom. [oil on moleskine], retrieved from https://www.alexgarant.com/gallery.
Glover, D. “This is America.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 5 May 2018. Web. 6 Sept. 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.
Magritte, R. (1964). The Son of Man. [oil on canvas] Private Collection. 6 Sept. 2018. Retrieved from https://www.renemagritte.org/the-son-of-man.jsp
Milosevic, N. Alex Garant. Widewalls. 2016. Web. 6 Sept. 2018 Retrieved from https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/alex-garant/
Garant, A. (2016). Daydreaming I. [oil on canvas], retrieved from https://www.alexgarant.com/gallery.
Garant, A. (2016). Reborn in Bloom. [oil on moleskine], retrieved from https://www.alexgarant.com/gallery.
Glover, D. “This is America.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 5 May 2018. Web. 6 Sept. 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.
Magritte, R. (1964). The Son of Man. [oil on canvas] Private Collection. 6 Sept. 2018. Retrieved from https://www.renemagritte.org/the-son-of-man.jsp
Milosevic, N. Alex Garant. Widewalls. 2016. Web. 6 Sept. 2018 Retrieved from https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/alex-garant/