Digital Collage
"Revolution"
Digital Collage
( 26 in x 36 in)
March 2018
Digital Collage
( 26 in x 36 in)
March 2018
Exhibition Text
For my digital collage piece I had used most of my inspiration by John Stezaker. John Stezaker's works mostly consist of old portfolio's of men and women and black and white, but uses environmental landscapes over the faces and is placed in an odd manner. I had wanted to use my both John Stezaker and Lucas Simoes to use a wine bottle to symbolize the beautifying of alcoholism.
Artistic Inspiration
John Stezaker
Mack LXXVIII
2007 Collage Unframed: 9.84 x 7.6 inches |
John Stezaker's is a contemporary photographic collage and approbation. His work is mostly consisted of taking portraits and manipulating them into a correlation juxtapositions. He had to adopt content and context of the original images to convey his own message in his piece. It is said that some of his work is inspired by famous artist Dada, and the movement of Surrealism. His work Mack LXXVIII represents how you can make a landscape look as if it could be apart of the the human form. Stezaker provokes the idea of taking a normal portrait or landscape and formulate it to look odd to create a new personality to the piece. Stezaker’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1990’s and has been adopted in renowned museum collections around the world such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Saatchi Collection, London, and the Tate Modern, London.
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Lucas Simões
L’Altro Uomo - Men’s style and culture book
Tu Tu Much Media Group, Milan - Italy 2012 |
Lucas Simoes is a Brazilian artist and architect, which explores the topographic aesthetics in fragmented portraiture through his Papercut series desretratos. He drives from the conception of pulling photographs of people he was close with and manipulating the face. In one of his series he had split the face into sections and moving them into odd placements onto the face. Which had mad the original peace that was a portrait an "unportrait." He had added a deep intimacy to the "dynamic of the photographic process." He has stated himself that the portraits he has performed with his friends that were in his Papercut series had been the strongest one that had sentiment of mystery. Most of Simoes work represents identity and the way each person identity's him or her self. He likes to portray the impossible and by using portraits and making them into a layered interpretation, which is such little information in a piece to make you configure the encounter with it.
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Meaning
The meaning behind my digital collage is portrayed from the idea that alcoholism is presented to be something that is beautified in the advertisement for alcohol. My piece "Revolution," represents the chaos and unprofessional ways of photography. Which is very similar to what I had learned from Simoes when researching his works of art. The soul of each piece has an underlining meaning, but by taking that small evidence and manipulating how a person will view your work is a work in confusion. When I had puzzled my face into the bottle I had seen how alcohol has affected certain people's life. It goes behind it and evolves how you perceive the piece itself. The overall conception is that alcohol is addictive and is supposed to be drop of the empty bottle.
Process
Brainstorming
Sketch #2
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After my first sketch I had thought about how I can incorporate Stezaker's more environmental landscape and putting it onto the bottle to encourage the manifestation of the beautifying of alcoholism.
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Sketch #3
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Although I wanted to have the same idea as Stezaker and Simoes of manipulating the portraits, I proceeded to combine both techniques of using landscape images and manipulating it to look like part of the background.. Also, with Simoes manipulating the portrait to look pleasing. With that I had also decided to add color.
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Step-By-Step of Process
Step #1-
When I was working with this digital collage I had to work with my own photos, which consisted of a wine bottle that I found. I manipulated the portrait and filled it as the background of the file of a 36 by 26 with a resolution of 170. Step #2- After I used this file I had looked at the photo and with the retouched and cropped the image. There was a dent in the picture when I took a picture of the the bottle which had led me to clone part of the background with the cloning stamp to cover the dent. Step #3- With the spot healing brush I held it down to have the content aware tool and with that I moved most of the faces of the bottle and put a picture of me that looked similar once I touched u it up. Step #4- I wanted to use the same conception as Stezaker, so I had used this a picture of rain on the windows and made it translucent and changed the color . I added that photo into Photoshop by opening it up as a file. Step #5- With the rain on the windows image I used the selection tool to cut and copied it onto the first layer. And used it as a background. Step #6- After I finished working on the faces I had selected from the bottom neck down and changed the colors to black and white hues to add to the idea of beautifying alcoholism with the only color to be the wine bottle itself. |
Skills and Techniques
As I had worked more with Photoshop I had learned to make things easier for myself by using tools that had made a wide selection if I needed it to be, than using a tool that would take more time. I had also learned to structure out my time when given to to work on Photoshop. So, before going to school I would go over Photoshop guides and tools before I was going to start my next step on my collage. This had saved me time when I was having trouble going on to the next parting of creating my piece.
Compare & Contrast
While looking at Stezaker I incorporated his talent of taking an old portrait an using a landscape photo and placing it onto the background to make it seem as if it was part of the Impressionism movement. Which is similar to what I had wanted to incorporate into my piece. With my face I wanted to put it on the bottle to represent that the people who are drinking it are exemplifying a portrayal of alcoholics. Although I decided to take on Simoes technique make the face almost non existent and very pale to be seen as sickness within the person. I used multiple images and I placed them not organized or in it's original placement so it would look aesthetically pleasing. Although outside of both Stezaker and Simoes's techniques, I wanted to give my piece color that would look out of the ordinary, so I selected parts of the body different colors. Although since I had used my own image I tried to keep the images within the same relevance, so it would look aesthetically pleasing.
Reflection
Critique
After following through with this whole piece I have now realized just how easy Photoshop used to look when I was not the one doing it. Doing this collage had took a lot of my time and at first none of it had made sense, Although I accepted the challenge and saw through it. I have experience in Photoshop and if I were to proceed doing more things like this it would take less time, but would probably be more entertaining. Looking at my piece I feel as if I had tried my best and look forward to creating more things that involve the computer. I would say that with more time spent into things like Photoshop and maybe Illustrator I could get more involved with the idea of pieces that are digital.
Experimentation
In the process of completing this piece, it had involved many different outlooks on how to work with this piece. So, technically there was no certainty to a specific experimentation. Although before I had added color to body parts I spent time looking at different hues to be a layer over the body. I even used different tools to help me make certain choices of the colors and the transparency. In conclusion most of my experiments had came towards the end of completing the project as whole.
ACT Responses
What is the overall approach ( point of view) the author has regard to the topic of your inspiration?
The point of view the author has regard to the topic of my inspiration is to inform the viewer about who the artist is and how the artwork is presented.
- What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc, while you researched your inspiration?
- The generalizations I have concluded about the people and ideas while I researched had been that the artworks people were doing with different photos that had been produced to influence the audience. Which I had used to try to influence my audience as well.
- What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
- The central theme I had for my inspirational research was to take two images that I had took and used as one piece, which would show my audience an old concept that is not spoken upon and put it to use.
- What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Bibliography
“John Stezaker.” Petzel Gallery, www.petzel.com/artists/john-stezaker?view=slider#10.
Publicações - lucas simões, lucassimoes.com.br/publicacoes.
Saatchi Gallery. “John Stezaker.” John Stezaker - Artist's Profile - The Saatchi Gallery, www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm.
“John Stezaker.” Richard Gray Gallery, www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/john-stezaker.
“Lucas Simões Photographer Interview – Desretratos: Communicating Transience and Character through Deconstructed Portraiture.” Music Art Film Review - REDEFINE Magazine, 6 Nov. 2013, www.redefinemag.com/2013/lucas-simoes-photographer-interview-desretratos-series/.
Publicações - lucas simões, lucassimoes.com.br/publicacoes.
Saatchi Gallery. “John Stezaker.” John Stezaker - Artist's Profile - The Saatchi Gallery, www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm.
“John Stezaker.” Richard Gray Gallery, www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/john-stezaker.
“Lucas Simões Photographer Interview – Desretratos: Communicating Transience and Character through Deconstructed Portraiture.” Music Art Film Review - REDEFINE Magazine, 6 Nov. 2013, www.redefinemag.com/2013/lucas-simoes-photographer-interview-desretratos-series/.