One Week Tasks

During my PVA course my teacher has set various 1 week tasks which are shown below:

Lightbulb Task

Brief:

On Tuesday morning I was given a sheet with a brief and then asked to return in a week with a photograph. Below is my brief:

Take a light bulb any shape or size up to you, take a photograph and be creative the lightbulb is you an extension of you and your imagination. No Photoshop tricks just pure photography.

Mood Board:

As I only had a week to conduct this response I needed to start working on it immediately so began by logging onto Google Images and created a mood board in Photoshop by combining all the images I found only which I felt were inspirational.




Planning

Using the photographs above I began brainstorming this idea in my busy book to try and come up with a final piece.










From my brainstorm I developed a final idea and drew up this in my busy book:


Developing

I began developing this idea, firstly I purchased a 20 watt bulb, this way it wouldn't be too powerful and would still allow for paint to be placed over it. I drew out three shapes which related to the theme of Alice in Wonderland, this was a girl (Alice) a teacup and a bottle (drink me bottle). I then cut out these shapes and placed them on my bulb using tac temporarily to decide where I wanted to place them. The next step was to stick them on so I could paint the silhouettes. I stuck them with pritt stick to the bulb, this would mean that I could peal them off easily later. After this I got a sponge and black acrylic paint and sponge painted over the paper objects and then using tweezers I pulled the objects off carefully to retain the silhouette. From this I placed the bulb into a lamp and began photographing it. Below are all the photographs I captured, I have placed them into a contact sheet and annotated around it.

Photographs

Although I did like these images none of these stood out well as good examples of my photography. Therefore working with aperture and exposure I re-creating the photographs this time placing the lamp with the bulb against a plain beige wall so that nothing drew focus from the bulb. I experimented with three different styles and below are the images I captured.

Aperture F 8.0 and Exposure -1.0


Aperture F 22 and Exposure -0.3



Aperture F 3.5 and Exposure 0.0 (neutral)


Response

I couldn't edit it any further so below is the image I chose for my final idea relating to this task:


Evaluation

I chose this image as the silhouettes are crisp outlines and clearly depict the narrative of Alice in Wonderland through showing three key images from the novel. Also I like the use of negative space as it means the amount of light that is within the image is clear and stands out, this has been helped by the neutral background which reflected the black light onto the camera. However if I was allowed to edit this image I would work with the rubber and content aware tool to make the outlines more clear and remove the areas where the paint has seeped over the outlines. As well as this I would make the black parts more dark so that light was only visible through the silhouettes and around the base of the bulb would be made completely black so no light was shone through this part either.  Additionally, I would accentuate the curves within the bulb as Alice in bending around the bulb. In the same way I would work on making it central within the frame by making the image thinner. Finally I would re-touch it up by adjusting the sharpness of the image as it was shot in such low lighting the quality of the photograph was slightly ruined so this would need to be re-worked. 

I am going to work with this idea again as it relates well to my artist Lotte Reiniger who produced shadow puppetry based on classic Grimm fairy tales. I feel showing a fairy tale story through elements of the story in the way I have above looks more interesting and subverts the idea of shadow puppetry as rather than having shadows being projected onto a wall from a light behind it places the shadow as the light directly on the bulb. I will also work with Adobe Photoshop to edit the photograph further once I have captured it and then possibly Adobe Illustrator to produce a overall illustration. 

On the Road Task

Brief

Thursday I was given another 1 week task. The aims of theses tasks are to try and spark our inner creativity. Below was the brief we were given:

Taking the title (On the Road) you are to interpret a vision of exploration into your own world and culture. Tell your audience in a series of 3 images what defines your own culture. 

As well as the brief I was given 4 tasks to conduct throughout this project:
  1. Document your thought processes
  2. Compare and contrast your research and development with authors, film makers, musicians and artists - we're not interested in the technical aspect of how you produce the work but why and how your making links to the subject matter.
  3. Create a piece:
    • 3 photographs
    • 3 illustrations
    • 3sculptures
    • 3 projections recorded
    • 3 pieces of short films
  4. Deliver a piece which is unique and should be unique to you.
Planning

To begin with I started brainstorming what my culture is. I didn't really know how to begin this so started by writing down a few things that are important to me and that I love then expanded upon this. I wrote this up in my busy book however below is a neater and more interactive version which I did through Prezi.com.


After I did this brainstorm I started thinking about some possible avenues which I could continue down when creating a response to this task. Below are some notes which I made concerning this idea:

 
I know needed to start working on this idea. I have chosen to follow the idea of a short animation. The main reason for this is that I haven't done anything like this before and I feel this would be a good opportunity to experiment with other medias. However I wasn't too sure how this would work so began by creating a mock piece which I have roughly drawn a tea cup and a line and seen how they metamorphosis into one another. I have decided to create the animation by using Adobe Photoshop this was because I know Photoshop well and I have recently practiced creating a animation in Photoshop and I can draw the objects in Illustrator and import them so they have a vector style and the lines are sleeker.

Producing

Firstly I need to draw the objects, I shall do this in Illustrator. As I don't have a lot of time I am going to use photographs I have already captures and a few new ones. Below are the images I will use. As it only has to be a series of 3 I am only selecting 3 photographs to illustrate and then placing them into one video so by the end of it I will have 3 illustrations with one video.


I placed all these images into Illustrator and adopted the same principle when creating them into illustrations. Firstly I did the outline in black pen using different dimensions. For all the images I kept the brush a round basic brush. For the dog I used pen size 2 for the outline and 1.5 for the detailing, for the cameo design I used 0.5 for the outline and 0.05 for the detail and for the teacup I used the 1.5 for the outline and 0.5 for the detail.



After this I went back into the illustration files and decided I didn't like the dog therefore began re-working on a new file. I decided to use a photograph of a set of headphones to demonstrate how music influences my culture. I applied the same principles as the illustrations above but this time began working with the colours. As I wanted the whole piece to be bright and vibrant I had to change fake the colours and made them red so they looked more vibrant and stood out. Below is the original photograph then the coloured illustration next to it.


Next I wanted to work with animation, remaining in illustrator I selected the Cameo drawing and then made the eye open and close and the smile grow bigger. This way it showed my creativity but also it made it more childlike and innocent so the viewer feels my work is more interesting. Also it makes it more vibrant contradicting some other pieces I have done which reflect the darkness of fairytales. I did all these in illustrator and was planning on taking them over into Photoshop or Flash and making them a physical animation. I applied the same idea to the teacup and drew a small brown tea drop and made it go into the cup. Below is a timeline of each of these steps.


After creating these and placing them into a timeline design I felt I didn't like the piece as much anymore. It's poor quality and I don't feels shows off all my skills. Additionally I feel it may be interesting to go back to working with photography and creating a photographic piece. However, it was good to experiment in this way but if I was to physically finish producing this piece I worry the audience may not understand the concept and may be drawn to the poorer quality illustrations and by-pass the content. 

Change of Idea

Therefore I am going to work on a completely new idea. Previously I have experimented with fake exposure shots and combing nature photos with photographs of people therefore I am going to develop this idea. Below are my inital thoughts on this idea:

Planning

As part of my new idea I am going to fake double exposure photography. I developed this idea when I recalled an artist I study last year called "Florian Imgrund" who develops double exposure photographs of humans and nature. Whereas I am going to combine humans and objects/animals e.g. camera, newspaper and a dog. I wanted to research how other artists where doing this, below are some images off www.thisiscolossal.com and have displayed them in a mood board - it includes work by Florian Imgrund and Dan Mountford.


Photographs

I captured photographs of 3 of my friends as I feel they are a huge part of my culture and I am planning on using them as the models to place my objects in front of (like the work in the mood board above). 

 


 

Producing

I took the same steps on each image in creating my final piece. Below is the first double exposure photograph I produced:



To create this piece I need to firstly chose my image which I selected as a magazine page with some writing and then placed it over the top of the image of the girl and then cut out the shape of her head from this magazine page. After this I experimented with overlay techniques and varying how it would look with a soft light or hard light and if the opacity made a difference. In the end I chose the overlay with the opacity of 100%. This meant it was strong and you could still see the girl as well as the magazine page.

With this next photograph I merged a image of a teapot with a image of another model:



To begin with I copied the image of the teapot over and shrunk it down so it was roughly the size of her head. Then turning the opacity down I rubbed out the parts of the teapot which went outside her head so all the detail was within her head. I then used the overlay tool to make the teapot become see through within her face. However, I decided to experiment further with this image and took it into illustrator and using a round brush for the outline and a dry brush for the teapot I drew over the original image to create a illustration. Yet I didn't this was as good quality as photographs were and I want to communicate a meaning of friendship and my own personality within this piece and I feel it is slightly lost with an illustration.

The following I photograph I went back to the original plan of producing Photoshop images, this time I used a image of a set of headphones and my final model:



I followed the exact same procedure for this image as I have done for all the others, however I don't feel it was as effect as the others. This is due to the headphones being small and looking more like they are placed on her face whereas the others sit better together. Therefore I have chosen to change the image. Still in keeping with the idea of music however this time I wouldn't be using my own image unfortunately. Personally, I grew up listening to a lot of rock music, in particular Led Zepplin. So I plan to use an image from a Led Zepplin artwork of a record called Kashmir which is one of my favorites. Below is a photographic step by step process of how I did this.



I took the same steps as I have done on all the other images but this time I edited the image of my model herself. I adjusted the levels and the exposure to make it brighter and create strong contrasts within the image.

Presenting

The next stage was to work out how I was going to present these images as a final response. As I enjoy reading often and my personal study has a focus on narrative I have decided to take photographs of pages from my favourite three books: Alice in WonderlandI Heart New York and Me and Mr Darcy. I plan to overlay these images over one another so that the words are slightly visible as are the girls. Additionally I have adjusted the original image of the girls to make them more bright and contrasting.Below are my merged images and my book pages:






I will now merge this photographs together, I am going to add a bevel style finish so they look like complete pages. I am using the same techniques for all the images, so below is the step by step process:


I firstly shrunk and straightened the book pages so they were neater and fit the image better. Next I used the overlay. For this image I used a standard overlay but for the other two I used a screen overlay. I made all images larger so they fit the book page better. Again for this image I kept the majority of the original image on the page but for the other two I made them more zoomed in. However, it still didn't look like a real page and therefore I went back to my first magazine "Planning for Paris" and used the same gradient idea. I made a small gradient on one side of the page then duplicated it, merged them back together and then copied it over before overlaying it and reducing the opacity to 50%. Below are how the images looked once this was done:

 

Experimenting

I then placed them in polarid style frames which had a quick drawing of a road on them - each different - then placed them all into one sheet. Below is how it looked:

I wanted to experiment once more with this idea so decided to make all the images black and white to see if it made any difference to the mood of the piece.

I felt it did look effective in showing some of the colours and creating an intense contrast. However as it is based on my culture and my own life I feel it is too dark. The dark colours convey a ominous sense which gives a dangerous feelings whereas I want the audience to interpret my work and interesting and bright. Therefore I am going to keep it as it was so that others when viewing my work see it as vibrant and vivid.

Response


Evaluation

I decided on this for my final response to "What is my Culture?" because I wanted to combine many key things in my culture which I think define my life. First and foremost my friends define my life and therefore I made the three pictures of three of them large so they are a focal point. Additionally having the merging of images allows the reader to enter into my culture and see what key things of my life and important. I added colour to the image by colouring the road but not making the colour too bright so it overtakes the image itself. The use of combining images shows my Photoshop and Photographic skills which are also important part of my culture. Therefore I feel this image does fufil the brief and it allows the viewer to be drawn into the piece and find something interesting within the piece.

Christmas Bauble Task

Brief


Mood Board

After exploring the brief above I now need to do some research into this artist and I feel the best way to do this is by looking at his work. I want to produce work using the same concepts as him rather than applying the same principles. 


As I am focusing on baubles I now need to look at how other artists have used baubles in their own artwork to reflect christmas. I have displayed this below is a mood board which has been made into a GIF with a twinkle effect bringing the mood board to life.



Now as it's Christmas I feel this can be a fun project to do. Therefore rather than planning everything and creating initial ideas I am going to grab my camera and some baubles and take some experimental images. Below is a contact strip of images which I captured over the Christmas period:

I took photographs of the bauble in my hand as I planned to overlay images onto the bauble. I photographed the things in the house which excited me and which I could use within this project. I decided on using the snowman image as I felt he was rather cute and this made me feel happy which is a feeling often associated with Christmas. Plus he is rather fun which adds to the mood Christmas emits for me. 
This is the first response I did. I used the image of the snowman as I said before I liked the theme it emits. Also having the bauble in my hand relates to how its my views of my Christmas. The bright colours look playful and fun and add to the piece. I feel this is a perfect representation of Christmas.




Another key part of my Christmas was spending time at my dad's where he lives on a farm surrounded by animals. Therefore I have incorporated this here as I have placed a picture of one of the dogs into a bauble. The dog - in my opinion - looks rather cute which I like and is almost nostalgic in that it's so cliched. Therefore I would like to explore some more work which is more meaningful. I feel although Christmas is a wonderful time of year it seems to be very media made now. Everyone looks forward to Christmas for the presents rather than spending time with family and friends. From this I aim to create another piece of work which has more meaning about how I feel Christmas has changed.







Below is my stop motion animation. This is a piece which I created to reflect my feelings that Christmas is now all about presents and that's it. No one cares what they do as long as they get what they want. Below is a short stop motion animation which reflects this. I didn't want it to be too over the top or rude towards the audience but just make them reflect. Below is this animation:
(I had to use a friends account on Vimeo therefore it has the name Aimee Hollands on it but it is my own work)

What is the true meaning of chrismtas? from Amy Taylor on Vimeo.




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