W11 PROJECT #5: Reference/Research Stage (1/4)

 Due to my schedule, this project will be a rapid creation. I was just able to get started on research today, and I plan to finish it Sunday/Monday, as I won't have any time the week leading up to the actual due date. 

I was excited for this project as it has been a while since I've done a completed work digitally. I mostly use digital tools for creating mock ups and refrences, but I actually started my art journey working digitially in March of 2020! I worked in Procreate, then wanted to move into animation, so I invested in ToonBoom and photoshop shortly before 2022. I then started focusing more on background and concept art, still somewhere in the animation realm. Because I had to go back to in-person school, I picked up traditional art so I could draw in class. Whoops. Now here we are.

I'll get into the symbolism/ties to the assignment later, for now here is my process for prepping references and research!

Research:

One of my favourite artists for quite some time now is Devin Elle Kurtz. When I was beginning with concept art her work and photoshop tutorials was a huge inspiration and helped significantly. She's been a background painter/designer for many many TV shows and you might recognize some of her commercial work:

So yeah, a lot of her work is super cool!

Here is her website: https://www.devinellekurtz.com/ 

I enjoyed the idea of "magical realism" where creatures dwelled in normal 'human' spaces. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. Here was the intial sketch.

Confusing for now, but stick with me here. I wanted to draw a dragon on a skyscraper, being reflected in building windows.

First I wanted to design the dragon. So I listed anything "dragon like" and worked from there.

I pasted references into the document. I thought it would be fun to work with a leopard gecko, a great eared nightjar, and/or a leafy sea dragon. To narrow down my scope, I did some gestural sketch studies aiming to capture the main features.

I started to narrow down and combine these ideas. I wasn't too big into the leafy sea dragon for this, I felt combining it would be too much. 

As you can see, I'm getting the feel for the character a bit more

Here I started sketching a bit more, working the design into the composition.

In case you're wondering about the various sketch colours, it's just so I can tell what is what without having everything on different layers.

Now I start roughly adding my values

I liked this, and added colour.

Once I've gotten a "painterly" view of what I'm trying to do, I photoshop my references more coherently.

This is a process called "photobashing." You combine a ton of images to make a new one, in combonation with other digital art elements. Think of it like a collage with extra steps and filters.

Mine looks bad. But it works!

It lines up with my sketch pretty well!

Everything looks disjointed still. So, I put a few overlay filters so it's a bit more coherent.

Perfect. This looks horrendous, but it will be useful.

If I was working traditional art, I would stop here and use this as a reference.

I can also do more useful things with this!

Above, I put a lighten and darken layer (one enabled at a time) with a neutral grey (exactly at 50%). This allows me to isolate the lightest and darkest parts of the work, and see the distribution of the values.

I also anonntate my work with any changes that need to be made or noted in the final version.

Now I start painting. This is what my set up looks like! I put screenshots of my work on a seperate document and pop it out. When I have it as a photoshop document, I can still colour pick & draw on top of the references. I can also zoom in and out, as well as collage the works.

Now I just... start? There isn't a lot to this part. I use a limited amount of layers from here on out (reference photoshop + planning was around 30-40, I'm estimating around 10-20)

I use default brushes I've customized with the mixer brush tool.

Here is the progress so far. I'll keep updating as it progresses.

W10 PROJECT #4: Final Layout + Process (4/4)

 Book 1: Series "Second/Third Impressions"

My plan for this project changed quite a few times. Originally I wanted to work with photos of myself I hated, and then altered them to "fit me." From there, I changed it to seeing the external self as an advertisment. This lead me to google myself--and I realized I wanted to work with that instead. I aimed to work that have been taken of me that have been posted online and replaced them with photos of myself that I took as a form of reclamiation.

Write up:

The goal for this book was to investigate the idea of reclaiming the privacy of your perception online. The idea also was partially influenced by one I had with my dad--the idea of "privacy" no longer exists online. When I was a lot younger, there was a lot of focus on not sharing your full name or location publically, giving very little information about yourself for safety. This has almost completely vanished, at least going into adulthood. Now the expectation to have a full profile of your work experience, CV, school, etc is becoming the norm. For the most part, you can find almost anyone online with just their name.

This book aims to reclaim the perception and misinformation of myself online. I took all the photos listed in the book myself. If you are to google me, you would see that in the spots I removed were once older photos. Despite the offenses being super minor, there are slight devations from the truths. For example, one that is highlighted is the "A story adapted from" in the article about Theatre for Young Audiences Festival. I didn't adapt the story--it was an original concept. Yet it was posted without my idea.

It also explores the discomfort with being perceived online. Having a photo of yourself randomly appear is unnerving. Reading about yourself in a third person creates an out of body feeling. This is especially the case if you feel this description was simplified, surface level or inaccurate. 

Commentary:

• The eye represents the camera in which the individual looks out of
• Replacing the camera represents showing others how you perceive things
• The long, full body image is all the google pages in which my name or something related to me appears. It ends at page 6
• Book begins with the first searches/information about me one encounters
• Book then transitions into a bit deeper of a search, being articles and instagram
• I work for the Meliorist, the depicted image is of an article I wrote
• If you look carefully in the media pass, you can see an overlayed image of myself taking a photo

Pages/Layout:

Book 2: Sequence "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

This book didn't go through much for change. I had a pretty solid idea from the beginning of what I was going to do. I tried to keep the images as "plein air" as possible, but altered a few things for the sake of lighting and composition. Most of these photos were taken in my room.

Write up:

This book is in chronological order of what would have been my response when asked "What do you want to be when you grow up" when I was a kid. However, instead of the photos being childhood photos of myself, they are how these interests have manifested throughout my life. It brings the question of "how much do we really change" into discussion. It was challenging to put all my interests on a timeline, just since they weren't inherently clear cut--I had interests that spanned multiple years and overlapped. Other than that, I adhered to a chronological sequence. 

Commentary:

• Palentologist--I did end up finishing the Lego dinosaur by the end of this project, but not before it was due. It's on the shelf in my room and it looks so cool.
• Palentologist--The laptop is displaying my neuroscience lecture. Apparentally, you need a good understanding of physics and hard sciences to become a palentologist. That was the closest thing I got to it.
• Engineer/inventor--this interest was mostly related to loving problem solving. The problem in this case was my lamp wouldn't melt my candle (it smells like fruit loops!) so I had to put a bunch of things under it so it would be closer.
• Writer--I still want to be a writer, but I'm totally okay with doing it on the side now. So ended when I was 8ish.
• Cat--Yep. I wrote the word "Cat" all over my house to convince my parents to let me get one. We haven't gotten rid of them all yet.
• It eventually worked. That is my* cat Jasper. He has 6 toes on each paw.
• *technically my grandpas cat, but it's a shared custody arrangement so I count it
• Dancer--glitter on my floor. I poured this glitter because there wasn't a spot noticeable to the camera where glitter was EVERYWHERE. I can't get rid of it. It hasn't left
• Dancer--I was debating doing something theatre related, but I couldn't find something other than an old poster to work. It's a lot more indirect, since I only do backstage writing/directing and I hate acting and being on stage. And glitter is a nightmare.
• Childish--never understood people who said that they believed they could "be whoever they wanted" and could "chase their dreams" as a kid, only to be crushed by "true adulthood knowledge." I was not like that? Who even was told that? I was scared of everything about adulthood. There was never a "loss of innocence moment."
• Childish-- I wanted to be silly and carefree when I was older. I am silly, maybe not carefree. But adulthood is far better than childhood.
• Animator--this is how I got into art! I started during quarantine
• Animator-- the photoshop document depicted is me editing the first book
• Smarter-- I always thought I was dumb as rocks as a kid, because I couldn't understand why I fell so far behind academically. Turns out it's just ADHD. And it's very solvable.
• Smarter--This isn't me saying "oh I took meds that made me smarter" (even though I see how that can be interpreted). But actually being able to get treatment & accomodations has made me feel MUCH better.
• Aquarium technician--The image depicts my old fish tank stand, now downgraded to a regular shelf.
• Normal--didn't work out
• An Ornithologist--I want to study birds. I've always wanted to study birds. I love birds. I'm a huge fan
• This is only a shred of my bird object collection
• Didn't know if I should put -Present on this one--if someone offered me a job in ornithology I would take it without hesitation. Decided not to because I'm technically not "going for it"
• Professor in something--Still my dream job. Decided to be a professor before knowing what to be a professor in. I know it's essentially impossible to get, but it's one of the only jobs that combine the flexibility, workoholisicm that I love.
• I'm getting my teaching degree as a backup. They pay sessionals 6k. It's equally as rare to be a tenured prof as it is to be a professional football player. Tenure prob won't exist by the time I get my PhD. Hooray.
• I have back up plan jobs A-Z. We will see what I end up doing.

Pages/Layout:

W9 PROJECT #4: Photo Editing Life Hacks (3/4)

 Hello everyone! I'm hoping to cover some of the edits I did as well as a "tutorial" on how I did them. I plan on posting a summary/write up for both of my books sometime this week or at least before Monday. 

Edit Example #1: Fake HDR 

For my second book, I wanted to show off the cool neuroscience class I love dearly as well as my lego dinosaur set. The neuroscience class was on my laptop, and the dinosaur was next to it in a dimly lit room. This meant that my laptop was over exposed, and the dinosaur was under exposed. I know how to do HDR (it's where you set your camera to take three photos, one over exposed, one under exposed, one regular exposure; and then you have photoshop combine it to get full details) but since my aperture had to be so low I figured I would just combine the images manually instead.

This is what the two looked like (one focused on the laptop, one focused on the dinosaur)

You can see how we lose all information in the laptop.

So from here, I took a photo focusing on the laptop, selected the screen with the lasso tool, and copied it. After this, I used perspective warp to set it into place. Then, I took that layer and changed the blending mode to darken. I explain what these tools do below:

Lasso tool: You know when you highlight text to be deleted or copied? It's like that, but you can draw a line AROUND what you want to "highlight." This lets you copy a part of an image or move it. (as well as other things)

Perspective warp: It places a grid over your images, and each corner of the grid can be pulled or pushed into shape. It's easier to show then describe, but you can make parts of an image bigger or smaller.

Blending mode: A setting for a layer that changes the way it interacts with the layers below it. For example, "Multiply" doubles the amount of contrast and colour saturation of the layer(s) below.

Darken: This is my secret to avoiding masks. "Darken" finds the darkest parts of the layer, and "erases" the lighter parts. Lets take the detailed photo of the laptop. The text is a dark black, and the background is white. When we put this image on a bright surface and change the mode to "darken," the white background disappears. This is useful especially when you have many grey values, so you don't have to use many masking layers!!

Masking layers: It lets you erase things, but lets you erase what you erased. So if you erase something and want it back, you can bring it back. 

The final result looked like this: 

Edit Example #2: Fake Masking Layer

"Darken" mode has a twin-- "Lighten." Lighten does the opposite of the darken mode, it removes all the dark parts of the image. I use it here. This prevents me from overusing the eraser tool!

The photo of myself adheres only to the shaded parts of the eye photo.

As you can see, I'm also messing with tone curves, which is a tool that has gotten me through drawing 2010. 

Tone Curves: Tricky to explain, but I will try. The line is a representation of the contrast in your piece. Higher = lighter, Lower = darker. As you can see, the left side of the line is the shadows, the right side of the line is the light parts of the image. The center is your midtones. If you place a point in the center and bend the line upwards, your mid tones get lighter. You can see this in the image below.

The reason why this is important, though, is because the darkest and lightest parts of the image remain the same. This is different than just lightening an image because it preserves the details in the lightest and darkest parts of the image. 

W8 PROJECT #4: Research + Replanning (2/4)

REPLANNING

Hello again. I've switched up the plan for Book #1. There was less of a particular reason for doing so, and more because I felt like I needed something stronger to work with thematically. I settled on the idea of commodification and turning yourself into an advertisement. It is in conversation with the question "Does how we are perceived/look represent us?" as our appearances become a form of advertisement. This is because we present ourselves in a way that allows for others to want to know more about us, or understand who we are. It's a first impression.

To portray this I plan on editing myself into multiple different profiles/advertisements (ie. dating app profiles, career related ones such as indeed, etc) and adding written commentary to different aspects of it. It's paralleling the idea of appearance and advertisements. I've seen this topic explored before, but those works tend to dive into the more "sexual" expectations and I plan on exploring the commodification/capitalism aspects of it. I'll try to find an example of a work that delves into the sexuality I was referencing. My conversation will revolve around how the ways we see each other are in response to short-form content and an over-reliance on shallowness.

Because long form content is becoming less and less consumed, most knowledge or understanding must be reached in short form. This creeps into our social lives as well, as we've adapted to make quick assumptions about people as not a lot of information can be communicated in a short amount of time

RESEARCH

I have a pretty clear idea of my plan now. So far I've collected dating app screenshots from my friends, and I will grab some of my own for other advertisements.

This was one of the screenshots from my friend that made me laugh. I won't include the others for privacy reasons of course.

From there I will be downloading any of the screenshots, matching the typography and then adding my own photos in where the others used to be.

In the library I had great luck looking through the oversized section!

I found a bird book. Very important. The title was indiscernible on the spine, but the number was QL 674, if anyone needs to look it up. I was inspired by the white backgrounds on the "photos" as it made them more apart of the page. I plan on replicating this. 

This was a page layout from Horst: Patterns From Nature. This doesn't fully play into what I'm planning, but it is interesting. I mostly grabbed it for my mom who does abstract nature photography!

I was too scared to crack the spine of this one, but this book was from an untitled group photography book! It had birds on the cover. I enjoyed how the photos were set on the page--there was a nice fluidity to the placement, and I may replicate it for my second book. 

I found a book of photography books. It was titled The Book of 101 Books. Which was exactly what it says in the title. The book within a book I enjoyed was Peter Hill Beard: The End of The Game. I liked the layout of this one the most even from the quick references. It has multiple photos in almost a collage format which is close to what I'm going for. It doesn't stray too far from the original format either, and still looks quite visually pleasing.

 

Art history is almost over and I want to grab a snack and go to bed, so I'll leave it here for now.

W7 PROJECT #4: Planning (1/4)

So far I've planned out some of the structure related to these books.

Both books naturally fall into conversation with each other. Book one is more of a surface level, "industrial" look into the individual, while the second book is more personable. Since the first book replicates the first meeting of a person--you know their face, maybe what they're wearing--the second book, being representational of the individual without their face has inherently more depth. My plan for both of them keeping this in mind is as follows:

BOOK 1: 

Photos that don't represent me, but are of me. This will be both an assortment of found photos (of myself, of course) and taken ones. I really don't like my ID card photo, and the idea of having it at 8.5x11" is unnerving. I strongly dislike being on camera. I'm hoping to play off of this, and starting with a photo that doesn't "look like me" and distorting it until I feel it is representational. My plan for this book is significantly more vague and I will likely change my plan as I work. The changes will be a combo of photoshop editing and physical editing once the books are printed.

BOOK 2: 

I'm aiming to represent my thoughts & interests through this book. I plan on collecting photos of myself when I was younger engaging in things I found interesting, and then showing objects or memorabilia of that time to see what remains. This might be dinosaur figurines, tape marks on my wall, old journals, etc. I also plan on doing the inverse--taking photos of recent interests and then moving backwards and finding things from my childhood that hints towards me developing that interest. 

For now, I'm attempting to create a roadmap of my interests. Fortunately they are nearly drastic, extreme, shifts in interest. I tend to drop old interests entirely when I pick up a new one. Sometimes this doesn't happen, though. For example I've been at least somewhat interested in birds consistently in my life. Tying this into the "sequence" aspect of the theme, I will need to find a way to tie it in. But that's a problem for later me!