Unknown Fear
Digital Collage
September 2016
61 x 91 cm
Exhibition Text
Unknown Fear
Digital Collage
61 x 91 cm
September 2016
This piece is a digital collage created to represent my daily life as a teenager. I was inspired by Rene Magritte's 'The Lovers' and the use of the veil to represent frustration and fear without knowing what that frustration or fear is really about. This represents me because I have social anxiety and I often find that I'm panicking without knowing why. This piece was created using Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Unknown Fear
Digital Collage
61 x 91 cm
September 2016
This piece is a digital collage created to represent my daily life as a teenager. I was inspired by Rene Magritte's 'The Lovers' and the use of the veil to represent frustration and fear without knowing what that frustration or fear is really about. This represents me because I have social anxiety and I often find that I'm panicking without knowing why. This piece was created using Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Inspiration
The main inspiration for my piece came from René Magritte's 'The Lovers', and Salvador Dali's 'Landscape of Port Lligat, both of which are part of the surrealist art movement. I specifically chose 'The Lovers' because the hoods over the two figures faces represent isolation and frustration between the two people. The veil or mask covering someone's face is also a larger theme with surrealist painters. It represents what lies beneath the visible surface, and can be seen in paintings like 'The Son of Man' by Rene Magritte. I wanted to incorporate this idea into my collage so I used a white cloth to cover my face like in 'The Lovers', which represents my anxiety which causes fear and frustration, and I often do not know why. In terms of color I was mainly influenced by Dali’s 'Landscape of Port Lligat'. The painting uses vibrant green and yellow colors against the stark black mountains in the distance to create an almost alien landscape. I attempted to emulate this dream like landscape by using a filter to make the colors more green and yellow making the overall piece significantly stranger.
Process
Brainstorming
1.) I started thinking of ideas for the piece after finishing my essay.
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Collecting Images
3.) After I had an idea of the piece I was going to create I began to take photographs.
Experimenting
4.) I first started off with a blank 36 x 24 inch page with the resolution set to 170. The first thing I did was place the image of lake Michigan to create a background for the other images to be placed on. I then began to use the quick selection tool to cut out the picture of my head and copy and paste it into the collage. To create the tree frame/background I cut out an image of a tree branch and copy and pasted it until it filled the screen. I then took those individual layers and merged them into one single layer and used the spot healing tool to merge the images together and make them look like one image instead of multiple images that were copy and pasted next to each other. Then to get a more loose look I used the accented edges filter to blur it and make it look more like a painting. To finish the piece I used a brightness and contrast filter to lighten the image and I also used a hue and saturation filter to make the image stranger and make it more dream like.
Reflection
Overall I am not all that pleased with my collage. I believe I fell short on creating a piece that was easily able to tell a story and it was not very similar to Dali's 'Landscape of Port Lligat'. There were some things that I did like about the piece though, the overall image is visually appealing to some extent and I thought I was able to convey Magritte's 'The Lovers' in an appropriate way. Although I was not pleased with how the piece turned out I was able to learn many things about photoshop while making it. I learned mostly about using the photoshop tools and how expansive of a program photoshop is, every time I needed to do something with the image there was always a simple way to do it. Image adjustment layers were most helpful for any minor adjustment to color, contrast, brightness, etc.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork
My digital collage connects to my artistic inspiration by the use of a veil which is similar to Rene Magritte's use of a veil in The Lovers. The collage is also similar to Salvador Dali's Landscape of Port Lligat as both my piece and Dali's piece use a greenish yellow hue to make the piece seem more alien and strange.
What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The information about my artistic inspiration talked mostly about the symbolism of the pieces.
3)What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Through my research
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My inspiration research mainly focused on surrealist pieces
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I assumed that people believed that the future would be in space because that dream seemed promising at the time and that their lives were not great on Earth so the prospect of leaving would be amazing.
My digital collage connects to my artistic inspiration by the use of a veil which is similar to Rene Magritte's use of a veil in The Lovers. The collage is also similar to Salvador Dali's Landscape of Port Lligat as both my piece and Dali's piece use a greenish yellow hue to make the piece seem more alien and strange.
What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The information about my artistic inspiration talked mostly about the symbolism of the pieces.
3)What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Through my research
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My inspiration research mainly focused on surrealist pieces
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I assumed that people believed that the future would be in space because that dream seemed promising at the time and that their lives were not great on Earth so the prospect of leaving would be amazing.