Blog #5

1. What is the most significant accomplishment in looking at your Midterm or  Final? You can talk about technique in Photoshop, investigating your Big  Idea, creating a meaningful artwork, etc.
Honestly, I like my midterm more than my final. I think I was really happy with the way the two panels  worked together as a diptych. It was a challenge to make the piece work as a whole and flow nicely into one another using Photoshop tools. I tried to accomplish that with a similar washed out background and similar lighting in both pieces. I also tried to make the artistic style similar in both panels. I think I was more successful in portraying my big idea of uncertainty in an artistically creative and thought provoking manner with my midterm as well. It was definitely a great challenge for me to take something I felt connected to personally, turn it into a established "big idea," and then find a way to present that big idea through Photoshop. So, my midterm in general was probably my most significant accomplishment.

2. Choose a project in the class and discuss your most challenging learning  experience in Photoshop. Focus on a technique or concept from Photoshop that was difficult at first, but that you mastered by the end of the quarter.

I think I would have to choose Quiz 3 and the final as projects I struggled with and was challenged by. Just applying physical transformations in a convincing and flawless way was hard for me to do successfully. When it was time to do quiz 3 I had a difficult time even coming up with a creative idea for retouching an image. Looking back on what I turned in for quiz 3 I see a lot of room for improvement. But, I think I did improve pretty significantly between that quiz and what I turned in for my final. I used a tutorial from worth1000 to help me convincingly retouch an image of my 19 year old friend Julie, making her look well into 70s or 80s. My use of the clone stamp tool and liquify tool improved through practice. I also learned how to effectively use masks, adjustment layers, filters, and layer styles in a way that made a piece of work look more reaistic and complete. These are all tools that baffled me at the beginning of the quarter. An aspect of quiz 3 that doesn't look so good would be the rough selection egdes of the hair, I think you can see where I was able to create a smoother transition on the final. I also think that my use of the liquify tool to make the lips bigger in quiz 3 could have been done better with a clone stamp tool, which is what I used to thin the lips in my final.

3. Compare two projects from the quarter to compare and contrast how you  achieved making meaning in the work. Try to showcase in your examples an improved capacity to making visual images that mean something as opposed to being a showcase of technique.

I chose to compare my Quiz 2, the selection quiz, to my midterm. Obviously, my main goal for quiz two was to just meet certain requirements within the class period. For quiz two I simply played around with the brightness and contrasts of images. I took an image of a flower, selected it out and placed it in a different picture. I also selected a butterfly from one picture into another. To make the changes more realistic I changed colors, added drop shadows, changed perspective and sizes and so on. I also made random use of the liquify tool. However, there is clearly no deep meaning or "big idea" begind this final image of a butterfly sitting on a flower. I was just showing that I could use certain techniques in photoshop. However, in my midterm, I had to continue putting these techniques to use, while keeping my big idea in mind the whole time. To do that, I first determined what my big idea was, in this case, uncertainty, and then zeroed in on some themes I could portray in my project, being lost and fearful. I then took the topic and subtopics and applied them artistically. I had to take the images I was using into much more careful consideration than before to make sure my project made sense.To reinforce my big idea I created a bright and eerie lighting to my work. I also used blurred images with sickening colors. The repeated imagery of long endless passages or paths and staircases was meant to represent being lost and not knowing if an end is near, thus creating fear. There are distant and dark figures wandering in most of the passages adding to this effect as well. I also merged an image of a young boy and a grown woman to create an unsettling and strange image with eyes wide in fear. The whole time I was creating this image, I had to make sure I was effectively getting my meaning across. And to do so I had to use all those techniques I used in quiz 2, but this time is all came down to a significant point I wanted viewers to understand.

Final Artist Statement

     My big idea is Uncertainty. I decided to look into the theme of age and how it relates to this big idea. In the process, I discovered that the theme of being lost and uneasy made its way back into my work. Another idea of peace and calm became minor topics as well.  So the diptych can work as a comparison and contrast.
     The beginning research for my project was, in a way, already completed since I focused on uncertainty for the midterm. As my final developed I found myself looking back to the midterm and reusing certain techniques I incorporated before again, such as eerie lighting and blurred images. Also, I continued with the idea of creating work that looks simple, but still has levels of complexity and substantial thought behind the work.  However, this time I did looked back to some of the very first blogs where we did word associations and there I got the idea to focus on how age and uncertainty connect. Since I personally identify age with people, I decided to use that as my main subject matter. I looked at the artist Francis Bacon’s strange portraits for inspiration for my final. I found that I was very inspired and somewhat appalled by the way Bacon distorted the human face and made it so unique and thought provoking. I did not take my project to that extent of deformation, but it did have an impact on my overall composition. Her face does not match up perfectly when the diptych is presented side by side. I also researched images and artwork that I found to be tranquil and stable for the peaceful theme in my work.
     For the left half of my diptych I was portraying the idea that with old age comes peace and stability. To get that point across I took the image of my friend, Julie, and aged her significantly by the guide of a worth1000.com tutorial. There is meaning behind the fact that Julie is smiling and happy even though she is old and beautiful in a different way.  I also made use of warm tones and inactive composition to create a happy and calm atmosphere. The right half however is questioning what youth is really all about. Many might be deceived by the beauty and opportunities that come with being young; however it really can lead to a lot of confusion. I made use of blurred and unfocused images once again to make the composition unsettled. I also created a bright setting with eerie lighting. In this part of the diptych the girl is not smiling, she is serious and pensive. I tried to make her skin and features look flawless, contrasting with her unhappy facial expression, to enforce the idea that beauty doesn’t always bring happiness or certainty. There are also blurred images of Julie standing right at a crossroads of two paths leading into dense woods, signifying a person being at a crossroads in life and uncertain of what move to make.
     This big idea is still important for me for similar reasons as before. I am confused about where my life is headed and if I am on the right track. However, this time I am admitting something a little strange about myself. Basically, I think it would be great to be old. I think I get overwhelmed by how much life I have ahead of me and whether I am filling it with the right choices. I think my youth is going by in a blur. I am always annoyed by the phrase, “I’m an old soul,” but I suppose I probably am. I also associate peace with old age, you made it through the rough part and now you are able to relax and do whatever you want.  I am sure that is not always the case and I am not thinking rationally, however, it is still the idea that I incorporated into this project.

Blog #4 Continued

Through some more research I am sort of finding inspiration in different places, so I felt like I should update so my final doesn't seem completely random. I am still working with the overall big idea of uncertainty, with a focus on age. However, as I have been working on my project I feel like I am also still drawing from the idea of being lost and uncomfortrable. But, it all relates back to age more once you have all the visuak inspiration. But, the other half of my diptych deals with the peace I feel comes with old age. so I began researching artworks that are peaceful. These are three that I have tried to incorporate into my project.

What I am notcing and trying to show in my final si the stability and calmness in the compositions. Everything is pretty balanced and there is not any content that is too overwhelming or crazy. I also really like the warmer tones in the top two images because they make the artwork feel happier.

Blog #4

Part 1: Rough Draft of Artist Statement

I have decided to continue with the big idea of Uncertainty. I feel like there are plenty more themes and topics that relate to uncertainty and can be further explored. Right now, I am really drawn to the idea of Age and Uncertainty. Maybe I could do a project on the Age of Uncertainty. I think that the age of a person can obviously play a huge part in their life and the direction they are headed. On the surface, the theme I would like to explore for my final project may not seem clearly related to uncertainty or even my past exploration of being lost and fearful. However, I think that if the ideas are given more thought, the connections can really become apparent. As for the visual strategy, I would love to continue with the seemingly bold and simplistic style. I want to create something that isn't cluttered, but contains certain levels of complexity. That might be contradictory though, because age can be a messy subject and is a pretty confusing concept to come to terms with. If I can find a way to portray that conflict in a concise way, that would be ideal. Maybe I could explore how people think they know who they are and how their age affects them but then study the conflict they are feeling inside about it all. I honestly am not sure what context the work could be used. Maybe it could just be a picture in a self help book for people who are completely confused about their life. The caption underneath could say, "Does this picture sort of describe how you are feeling right now?" That's kind of ridiculous though.

Part 2: Three visuals/material that have influenced your work for the final

Gabriel Orozco is one contemporary artist who I find inspiring. I think his work is a perfect example of something that appears overly simplistic, but really took a lot of time and effort. In some cases his work is really too simplistic, but there is always a lot of substantial thought behind what he does.

You might not know this by looking at it, but, Orozco cut this car, and put it back together and reconstructed it in a physical and mechanical way!

 Horses Running Endlessly, 1995. This piece is metaphorical for life, and it represents "thinking between the big picture and the big scale," according to Orozco

Black Kites, 1997. This is graphite on a skull! It took Orozco 6 months. He was analyzing, "How we perceive volume and tri-dimensionality, and in the end, how we perceive truth, through filters of light and dark."

I know this is sort of unhelpful but I was unable to find a link to a very interesting article I read by Gabriel Orozco, co written by Susan Collins. It really explains his work and ideas in more depth.

Another artist that I am inspired by is Trenton Hancock. His work, shown above, is not really simplistic. In fact, it is very busy. However, I really admire this artist's originality and creativity. if anything, i hope to implement the same whimsical quality he has in his artwork. I also find a lot of his work to be strange and unnerving, which can relate to age and uncertainty. There's more explanation of this artist at this link. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hancock/

Finally, a third artist that I ended up turning to was Francis Bacon. What really drew me to this painter was his exploration of human faces. I find the way he distorts these portraits very interesting. Especially when you pair the idea with uncertainty. I think the Bacon's work shows a side of torment to people being unsure of their own identity or age.

Part 3:  One new photoshop technique that will hopefully be incorporated into final

I found a lot of really amazing techniques on worth1000.com. One of which was making people look much older or much younger, which I think would be appropriate in a project concerning age.

http://www.worth1000.com/contests/26346/fountain-of-age-15

But I don't know if I want to limit myself to only learning that technique. I'm almost positive I'll end up changing my mind.

Quiz 4

These are the two movie posters I studied for my quiz, both great movies, but very different in pretty much all aspects. Hopefully, I was successful in my attempt to make Mean Girls look like a guy pick in the picture below.

It was an interesting experience to compare and contrast the movie posters for Mean Girls and Inception. Analyzing the various elements in both posters opened my eyes to the fact that most movies in the same genre really do set up their advertising very similarly. Chick flicks really use bright colors and happy or humorous pictures while action films go for darker images and hues. To begin with, it is very easy to find contrasting qualities between Mean Girls and Inception. The films are vastly different, from the aspect of target audience all the way to film content.  The poster for Mean Girls is very feminine, the background and text are various hues of purple. All the people on the poster are young adult females, and they are all very well dressed and pretty. There is no background content, leaving you to focus primarily on these girls and what they look like and how they are dressed. The girls in the background are all dressed similarly in pastel pinks, which are typically pleasing to the female eye, or at least associated with girls. The main character, Lindsay Lohan, is larger and dressed more boldly, but still looks clean and perfect. The lettering in this poster is also very playful and girly, large in some places, small in others. The alignment of the movie title with the main character’s body is very interesting and accentuates the separation between Lindsay Lohan and the clique of girls to the right. In general the poster is bright, colorful, and playful in tone. So, when you look at the Inception poster there are stark contrasts evident. To begin with, the overall hue of the poster is very dark with an eerie blue. There background image is very busy and important, the maze city is the primary setting of the film and where the action and adventure takes place. I feel that it gives a vibe of action and intensity to the poster. There is a lot going on with perspective in this poster, it really keeps your eye moving, as opposed to the stationary qualities in the Mean Girls poster. The text on the Inception poster is very simple and spaced out. It is smaller and less accentuated than the text in the Mean Girls poster. All minor text on the poster is white, but the title is in a bold red, with larger font than the rest. I notice that the text information on the Inception poster is very centered and blocked in, reading left to right, top to bottom. However, the text on the Mean Girls poster is used as a way to make your eye move on the poster in strange directions. The characters on the Inception poster are different from the ones on the Mean Girls poster since they are not impeccably dressed and polished. There is a rugged feel to them; some of them are even holding weapons. Their clothing is also very monochromatic and dark. A comparison I have noticed between the two posters is the composition of the people. In both posters, the main character is larger than the others and your eye in drawn to them first. There is also a clear spacing between the characters in both posters. The Inception poster lays everyone out in a nice consistent way, a tactic that seems to be used in most action movie posters. The Mean Girls poster uses’ spacing in a similar way, but it is grouped three to one. The facial expressions are surprisingly similar on both the posters, very pensive and serious. However, the rest of the information provided in the separate advertisements lead the viewer to different assumptions about why the expressions look the way they do. Basically, the Mean Girls poster lends itself to the “chick flick” label the second you look at it. The Inception poster however, attracts the male eye with its dark and manly qualities, and a setting of mysterious adventure.

Midterm Artist Statement

To begin with, my big idea is Uncertainty.  From the start, my concern was that this big idea would be too broad, since it can be interpreted in various ways. However, in the end, I feel like that actually was a huge help throughout the entire creating process. While brainstorming I was focusing on the vast amount of themes that tie in with uncertainty.  I gathered pictures representing religion, relationships, identity, life choices, and so on. My modulating meaning project presented the challenge of finding connections between my images and arranging them in a creative and equally thought provoking manner. The end result turned out to be a bit overwhelming with information, and in some ways, I even felt it was too obvious. I looked back to one of the very first artists I researched towards the start of the quarter, Vija Celmins, and her philosophy of making people find the significance in something simple in her artwork. I decided to implement this idea in my final midterm project. I looked more closely at the themes I was building off of in Blog #2, confusion, being lost, perplexed, and questioning. Of all of these, I truly identified with the theme of being lost. I was able to find incredible inspiration in the images off flickr.com relating to this subject, as well. Reflecting on how uncertainty and being lost go together then led me to the theme of fear. So these themes, being lost and fearful, are the two I specifically address in the final diptych project. After those two themes are grasped, I feel that the rest of the ideas associated with uncertainty, such as identity and confusion become easier to discover within the work.

      Finding other artists who focus on uncertainty as a big idea proved to be challenging, however, I did discover Martin Creed, a man of many talents, who uses uncertainty as a theme in the majority of his pieces. There was a certain quality of Creed’s work that I was drawn to; a sort of minimalism and bold style that I thought was useful in getting his ideas across. So again, I used that as inspiration in my own work. My project is meant to be seen as a diptych, but also works simply as a series. I was very liberal with my use of the brightness/contrast tool in Photoshop, giving both sides of my diptych a bright, washed out look. This was to give the piece an eerie vibe, lending itself to the theme of fear. Both parts of the work also have a blurred quality, to in general make the viewer feel unsettled and a bit uncomfortable. At first glance, there is not a lot of visual information going on in the diptych, as I was relying on the simplicity to help make a bold statement in the piece.  One half of my midterm was the combined faces of a grown woman, and a very young boy. I was hoping that the merging of these two images would be haunting. The facial expression is also very apprehensive and discontent. In both eyes, which are wide and unsettled, there are images of dark figures in long endless passages. This is to emphasize the idea of being lost and uncertain about what is ahead. The other half of the diptych uses an escalator and train tracks as a metaphor for paths in life. I purposefully made the image of the escalator blurred and hard to focus on, suggesting that it is hard to concentrate on one path in life and it is easy to lose your direction. This is why there is also an image of train tracks going straight into the escalator. There are two hikers placed right at a crossroads, deciding whether to continue on the train tracks or going up the escalator. So, they are also uncertain and being faced with pressing decisions. At the top of the escalator there is a dark image, but I made it very blurred and difficult to focus on. Ultimately, it is just a shadow that hardly resembles a physical being at all, and is simply ominous. This could be symbolic in various different ways. The image could represent that there is always something, or someone, waiting at the end of a difficult path, whether that be spiritual or human. It could be even be interpreted as an unsafe or foreboding image and push the idea of fear further. In general, the brightness and sterile quality of both sides of the diptych come across as bold and simple, but when you really look at them you can see the different themes and complexities at play.

     The reason I picked the big idea of uncertainty is because of how much I can identify with it in my life right now. In many ways I feel that uncertainty, and all the underlying themes that come along with it, are what drive my life currently. I feel torn between the person I am and the person I was to be. I am not saying I am deciding between being a grown woman or a little boy, but I suppose that is an artistic way to get that point across. I am fearful of the future and, since I am a control freak, I hate not knowing what it holds. But, I have found that it is impossible to get a good grasp or focus on, and no matter what, things are changing. When it comes to being lost, I am a professional. I literally do not know what direction to go with my life, between deciding a major and career that follows and all the other responsibilities that come along with my impending doom called adulthood. Studying and developing an artistic project based on uncertainty was significant to me because I was hoping to find some answers. I may not have exactly reached that goal, but this was a fantastic way to release some frustration about my life right now.

BLOG #3

The first artist I researched was Martin Creed. There were many different things that interested me in Creed's work, however I was really drawn to him because of the variety of his work. According to his website, "In recent years Creed has worked on music, dance, writing, sculpture and painting: pieces ranging from compositions for symphony orchestra and music for elevators to architectural commissions, public monuments and dance and performances which combine classical ballet with talk, music, film and animation." I also chose to look at Creed's work because he focuses on uncertainty as a theme at times in his work, which is my big idea. The website explains, "His laconic and ironic art is always puzzling and makes us question what the author meant. ‘I feel that people may interpret my work as they like it. I don’t think I should explain anything to them,’ says the artist." and, "Creed’s work is all-encompassing and seems to seek both to reassure and to confound expectations: ‘Trying to do what you want to do, trying to be free and trying not to do what other people want you to do. If you can do that, it’s amazing,' says Creed."

I think that I find the minimalism of Creed's work most intriguing. He works with the readymade style sometimes and takes regular objects and makes them art in his own way. I also just like the simplicity and bold style of his painting pieces.

When it comes to my final project, I think I will use the same approach as Creed when it comes to the questions I ask before and as I create my work. I also may try to implement Creed's bold and simple style.

 Work no. 1109, 2011, Martin Creed
Work no. 1098, 2001 Martin Creed

This piece above is from an exhibition called "Numbers" showed November 4-December 5, 2020 by Martin Creed
http://www.mmoma.ru/en/exhibitions/petrovka/martin_krid_chisla/
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/812/martin-creed-mothers/view/

What I really like about Steven Peters is that he was not a digital artist to begin with, but a musician. I am having a hard time grasping whether or not Peters has a big idea. Honestly I feel like he creates just for the enjoyment of it. But I feel like there might be some meaning behind this statement I found on his website, "Doing something creative for this charity event was the catalyst which started me on my journey towards creating more original artwork, which share a bold palette of colors, merging eclectic styles of art with photography and digital artistry with a whimsical re-design of nature." I find the playfulness of his work to be interesting, and his pieces remind me a lot of advertisements. He says on his website that he is often inspired by the scenery in his home state of Florida, but I don't see that influence in some of his other images, so I do question his inspiration in his other pieces. I am hoping to really channel some of Peter's creativity and fun in my final project. I also think it is a good idea to look to my surroundings for inspiration! Unfortunately, the work of Steven Peter's that I found to be the most interesting wasn't easy to obtain legally, so these are some of his other pieces that portray his fun colorful style that resembles advertising to me. Also, I love "Clueberries & Dreams." I think I would maybe like to implement that style of having something focused and strong and the background kind of be crazy like that.

 Daisy World - Steven Peters

 Clueberries & Dreams - Steven Peters

Kaleidescope Man - Steven Peters

http://www.stevenpetersart.com/index.html