Final: Self Portraits

Artist statement: I didn't explore many new tools with this project - instead, I mostly worked with what I knew best.  The first portrait I did was taking "self portrait" a little more literally: I took a photograph of myself and purposefully pixelized it.  I wanted to convey the fact that I want to be a graphic designer with this piece.  My second piece was "based off" the reflective quality of water.  I am a twin and I have always loved the ocean, so I conveyed both of these concepts through reflecting my name.  Additionally, I conveyed my love of art by giving the bottom half a "painterly" feel and also conveyed my quiet nature by using a light grey color.  My final piece revolves mostly around my pets.  I love minimalism so I wanted to convey a lot of simplicity with this piece: I took my initials (which I write often - I always start my class notes with my initials in the top right corner) and filled them in with a picture I took of my Quaker Parrot, Sammy.  In the bottom-right corner, I wrote my name in cursive like I always did when I was in art classes when I was younger.

Project 9

I wanted to challenge myself on this assignment by only using past images.  My 30 second gif is smaller than the others and much lower quality, probably due to the large size of image and amount of change.  I made the lion blink and the overall image change color.  The 1 minute gif features my "Spokane" collage changing color and moving occasionally.  Finally, my 2 minute gif uses my "painting" pieces in an optical illusion inspired from one I saw on the internet a long time ago.

This project was fun!  The pieces are obviously related in subject matter, but I wanted the first to look more unrecognizable and the second to look like a screenshot of Washington state.  The first image is a compilation of Chicago (I have family that lives there), Japan (I would like to go here), the United Kingdom (I would like to go here), Florida (I have been here) and the Grand Canyon (I would like to visit).  The second image combines Washington, Montana, Anaheim, the coast of California, Hawaii, and Yucitan.  I mostly used the clone brush tool and the eraser tool for these pieces, but also changed the  brightness/contrast and a little bit of hue/saturation changes.

 

  

After hearing about this project in class and reading the assignment sheet, I got the impression that this topic is fairly personal.  Keeping this in mind, I wanted to create a series that makes "sense" to me but not necessarily anyone else without explanation.  Once I went on Google Earth, I became inspired by the geometric feel of viewing an area from a distance, so I decided to create pieces that were made up of 4 images, each very simplified.  The first piece is "where I am from": I grew up in Spokane and have lived here all my life, so I decided to show some everyday scenes from me: the bus stop, the EWU pub, my house, and the STA Plaza.  The next piece, "where I have been" shows various coastal scenery.  My family has taken many vacations to the coast of Washington, so I chose to include 4 of my favorite beaches.  The top 2 images were rotated to make the image feel more connected with a blue line through the middle.  Finally, I have "where I would like to go."  Although I would enjoy to go to an exotic destination, I chose Montana: it's close to WA but a lot of my family used to live there.  I chose to include Whitefish, Polson, Missoula, and Glacier National Park as this is where my family has lived or vacationed to.  Although I have gone to Montana when I was younger, I never really had the chance to explore it.

Landscapes - Realism and Surrealism

 Artist statement:  For all of these pieces, I focused a lot on color: the two realist pieces have bright, lush colors while the surrealist pieces have colors that are relatively dull yet unexpected.  I had no real objective in mind.  I struggled a little with the surrealist pieces as I am not a big fan of surrealism, but I tried my best.  I mostly used the clone brush and eraser tool in these pieces and used a lot of layering.  Overall, I am not too happy with the results - they aren't overly believable - but I had fun doing them.

Assignment 5

Artist statement:  For these pieces, I focused on using the clone brush tool, layering, blurring, and altering colors.  The first composition was a compilation of a picture of clouds, a mountain range picture, the Eiffel tower, San Francisco, and Seattle.  The second includes a photo of the capitol building, buildings in Dubai, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a sky background.  The third is a photograph of a town, a photograph of an ocean, a photograph of clouds, and a picture of boats and a hot air balloon.  The final piece is a compilation of an earthquake site, a construction machine, construction cones, and a crane.  I suppose the two colored pieces are connected in that they both feature 2 famous landmarks and have a similar color scheme.  I tried my best to give the illusion of depth in these pieces.

Assignment 4

 

Artist statement: For this assignment, I only used clippings I found out of magazines.  I took words out of context and tried to convey them as best I could, visually speaking.  I mostly focused on cropping the word from its background and then duplicating it multiple times to get to the essence of the word.  I wanted plain white backgrounds that wouldn't distract attention from the words and I also kept the words in their original colors - an overall "clean" look was my goal.  I think they would work well as a set because they are all simply visual interpretations of a word. 

Assignment 3

Artist statement:  For this project, I wanted to use only objects I found outside.  I focused on figure-group and color relationships. I mostly employed different layering options, color manipulation tools, and the liquify tool to distort my objects.  The pieces are supposed to look "believable" yet surreal at the same time as well as moving but stationary.

Assignment 2

Artist statement: For this assignment, I really wanted to focus on texture, color, and pattern.  For the first two images, I used carefully aligned T-shirts.  The next in the set is simply made up of folder dividers that I stacked on each other.  The first "surrealist" piece was made up of different lids I found around my house.  The next was made up of different vitamins and pills in the red shade.  Finally, I used "beat up" everyday items for the last one: used sandpaper, a scotch-brite pad, an old envelope, and a crumpled up paper bag.  I wanted to explore geometric shapes (circles, rectangles, squares) yet still make the pieces have a somewhat organic feel to them - most of the shapes are slightly imperfect.

Assignment 1: Play

 

Artist statement:  I have used Photoshop for many years, so I mostly wanted to, as the project is named, play for this assignment.  My goal was to emulate a painted look while focusing on texture and color: hard and soft brushstrokes as well as warm and cool colors.  I started with a basic, organic shape and built and subtracted from it using the brush and eraser tool.  From there, I used different brush and layer modes to change colors and add textures into the piece.  All of the images except for one (the clouds) are abstract pieces that focus on color opposites, so I suppose the overall theme of the set is contrast.  I haven’t really had the chance to sit down and make art in a while, so my main goal was just to have fun!