The Lost Euphoric
By Israel Carpinteyro
60.96cm x 91.44cm Digital Manipulation September 13, 2018 The Lost Euphoric : Exhibition Text
The digital collage is a self reflective piece which focuses on my persona. The digital collage is composed of several pictures digital manipulated by the artist. I used a mixture of Adobe Photoshop CS6 and CC2018 to manipulate images and to create my digital collage, The Lost Euphoric. The Son of Man by René Magritte and Shots Marilyn by Andy Warhol have inspired me to create a piece that displays a lost soul on a beautiful yet sad world. My piece reflects upon my lack of direction for my glorious future.
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Digital Collage Essay
I am lost, I don't know where I’m headed in life, in fact I don't even know what I want to do. As long as I remember I've always worked hard to reach my dreams, which my teachers always told me. For all of elementary I've aimed to get good grades to get into a good middle school, in order to get into a good high school, so that I could go to a good collage, in which I could get a good career, to live a good life.
But now I'm three notches down a totem pole and realized that it has become a tree filled to the brim with branches containing a different future for me. As I look around I see friends and peers already going down a certain path career path, I see them taking on apprenticeships and start working, and then there’s me, lost with no sense of direction. Like a dog that has finally caught it’s tail, I am at a stand still in which I’m not sure what to do next. Should I aim to get a degree in architecture, should I take up on an apprenticeship as a electrician, or perhaps become a musician, writer, filmmaker, and/or baker. I focused so much on the future that I began to ignore the present, It began to fade into the background, and I allowed it to happen. I knew it was bad and I tried to focus more on the present but I couldn’t, I was stuck. But through recent experiences Ive realized that focusing on the future doesn't ensure a good future, the things you do now is what ends up shaping not only your future but the person who you will eventually become. But now I've taken the initiative to better my situation and taken the time to life time one step at a time. |
Artistic Inspiration
After learning the basics on how to use Photoshop to create my piece. I began to undergo the creative process, On the first day I began to look through art movements in search for inspiration. After an hour or so of searching I choose to base my piece on the surrealist piece titled The Son Of Man by Rene Magritte and the pop art piece titled Shots Marilyn by Andy Warhol. I tried to achieve this feeling of emptiness present in The Son of Man by imitating the emptiness of the background and it’s contrast against the man. The apple present in The Son of Man also makes an appearance in piece as I use a record player to cover my face and to establish contrast against my figure. I could've gone for a similar tone established in The Son Of Man by it's minimalist use of color. But i choose to use more vibrant colors to set a tone for my piece. That's when Shot Marilyns came into play as I used it’s vibrant color choice to establish emphasis within my piece and to give my piece a more lively tone.
Planning
Once I had my an Idea of what I wanted to make I began to sketch what would become my piece
For this one I intended to use natural lighting to give the records some highlight. The background was intended to be a horizon of high intensity, then i would have to incorporate dark values into the body to contrast against the intensity of the background.
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For this one the records become the background, in a random yet organized way to give the feeling of controlled chaos. I also intended to change the colors of the records, and to change the colors of the body to negative to contrast against the dark colors of the records, also i changed the intensity and color of the record player to establish it's emphasis over the man and the records.
For the big record I intended to change it's intensity and color, I planned to do the same for the body so that it contrast against the record. As for the small
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Creation Process
Photography
Once I chose what sketch I would bring into fruition, I began to take pictures pictures. The pictures I took were not of the best quality, after tweaking with my camera and not achieving the results I wanted, I had to look for other means when it came to taking my pictures. I overcame this problem by borrowing my dad’s camera which had better quality, and gave me the results I was looking for. Once I had my pictures it was time to start making my digital collage. Shown below are some of the pictures I took for my project
Creative Editing
Once I had the pictures necessary to create my digital collage, I booted up Photoshop and began to crop and edit my images. That's when I began to get frustrated as the poor lighting of my room made it hard to perfectly crop pictures, as my skin tone blended in with my rooms orange-ish walls. So I set up my own makeshift photography studio, I did this by laying two large sheets of paper on the floor and shining a lamp towards the sheets. Once I set it up I went back into Photoshop to work on my piece. After taking care of the problem, It was much easier to crop pictures. In order to get the highest quality when cropping, First I used quick select on my image to shorten the amount of work, Then I used the selecting tool to get any of the details the quick select missed. Lastly I used refine edge to polish my pictures
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Putting it Together.
Once I finished editing my pictures I started to compose my project. I first placed a layer of records to fill the screens. I placed records into the background to fill the holes left by the placement of the records. Once I had the backdrop I added in my picture which overlaps the Record background, lastly I added the record player and made it shorter so that it could fit perfectly in my face. This became the mainframe of my project, what followed later was to alter the aspects of my piece
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Experimentation
When it came to Experimentation I primarily focused on the hue, intensity and contrast of my piece. I Primarily focused on color inversion and color saturation. To achieve the color of the records I lowered the tone and raised its saturation. I started to play around with color saturation with my body but none of the colors achieved the contrast I wanted. So I implemented color inversion and I immediately fell in love with it. As for the color of the record player, I achieved it by raising its tone, saturation and luminosity.
Critique
When looking at my piece and my inspiration I tried to maintain a balance between its influence on my ideas and my process. My piece is filled with vibrant colors which shares the likeness of Shots Marilyns, but that's where all the connections ended As Shot Marilyns mainly used solid colors, meanwhile my piece consisted of a variety of inverted, and vibrant colors, whose looks were heavily edited. As for the Son of Man, I used it’s composition and twisted it to make my own variation of it.z Instead of using a deserted landscape for my background I used records to establish the contrast between the background and the body within my piece. One thing my piece and The Son of Man have in common is that we both use an item of high intensity to obscure the face of the figure and establish emphasis.
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Reflection
I learned a lot from this project, I had a rough start as I couldn’t take clear pictures or properly crop pictures for my life, but through these hardships I learned how to properly crop pictures and how to make the best of my tools. I learned about experimentation, as I manipulated my surroundings to get clear pictures, I manipulated scale, placement and color, to bring balance,contrast, and unity into my piece. If I was given the option to do this project again I would like to incorporate things into my background to give my piece unity as I felt it there wasn't much going for it. This was the first project in where I was given full responsibility on deciding how to approach the project. From this experience I learned greatly about the process of creating art, and the aspects that go into creating a piece.
Connection to the Act
1. Q: Explain and describe how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationship between your inspiration and it's effect on your artwork
A;By looking at them from side to side, I was able to see the elements of art that were present in my inspiration on my piece. I wanted to create vibrant piece that reflects on the use of color throughout inspiration.
2. Q:What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
A:From my inspiration research I can conclude that my that people are always trying find out/know about the unknown, and it's conflict against what is known.
3. Q: What kind of realizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
A; There
4. Q: What was the central Idea or theme around your inspirational research?
A:The central idea behind my inspirational research was the idea of not knowing, As The Son of Man revolves of idea of people wanting to know whats behind the facade of people
5. Q: What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
A: That people are always curious about the unknown and that many are willing to go great lengths to find out. The small things they want known maybe as small as wanting to know what time is it or as big as what will the world look like in future
A;By looking at them from side to side, I was able to see the elements of art that were present in my inspiration on my piece. I wanted to create vibrant piece that reflects on the use of color throughout inspiration.
2. Q:What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
A:From my inspiration research I can conclude that my that people are always trying find out/know about the unknown, and it's conflict against what is known.
3. Q: What kind of realizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
A; There
4. Q: What was the central Idea or theme around your inspirational research?
A:The central idea behind my inspirational research was the idea of not knowing, As The Son of Man revolves of idea of people wanting to know whats behind the facade of people
5. Q: What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
A: That people are always curious about the unknown and that many are willing to go great lengths to find out. The small things they want known maybe as small as wanting to know what time is it or as big as what will the world look like in future
References
“The Son of Man, 1946 by Rene Magritte.” The Lovers II, 1928 by Rene Magritte, www.renemagritte.org/the-son-of-man.jsp.
“Andy Warhol's Marilyn Prints.” Animals | Causes of Color, www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html.
“Andy Warhol's Marilyn Prints.” Animals | Causes of Color, www.webexhibits.org/colorart/marilyns.html.