Digital Collage
Meaning
Your mind plays a huge role when it comes to finding out who you are. Self-image reflects the importance that one’s thoughts has in regards to the belief of feeling enough. Growing up, I had always looked up to the standards and examples that I was introduced to. I’ve always struggled with acceptance, due to the fact, that I never felt that I lived up to the expectations of “beauty.” I grew up with technology, hence, the expectations of whom I should be surrounded me at a very young age. Nobody ever told me who I should be or to act a certain way, that’s just a thought I started generating as I grew up and was introduced to all these models.
Self-image has always played a huge role in my life from little things such as hair, to bigger things such as appearance. I started taking these models and used them as a representation of who I should be, as these ideas started to prosper and I started to create a huge bias as to how women should look and what they should wear. Setting these expectations for myself has not allowed me to express who I really am. This all changed when I had a conversation with one of my aunts. She opened up my eyes to be whoever I want to be and do what I want to do. Her words really encouraged me and took a huge toll on me, therefore, now I worry less about they way I look and what I’m wearing. I used to feel very uncomfortable when I had to rush out of the house without makeup on and a nice outfit, and now I feel as if I have more time to be productive rather than worry about simple little details.
The confidence I had worked so hard to gain, all went down the drain as soon as I started high school. I started to feel very insecure of the way I looked and dressed, therefore, I took it upon myself to wake up super early every day in order to do my makeup and also choose an outfit accordingly. This started to get harder as the year continued because I wasn’t sleeping enough and I was just tired all the time. This routine continued for 2 years straight. That’s until I started my Junior year of high school, I decided that I wouldn’t have time to wear makeup all the time since I was going to be very busy completing all of my school work. This forced me to step out of my comfort zone and show up to school without any makeup on. What made this experience less awkward was that I started to get lots of compliments and that just made me feel more sure of myself. I struggled a lot with fighting my own self-image in order to live a happier life and I am now happy where I am.
Self-image has always played a huge role in my life from little things such as hair, to bigger things such as appearance. I started taking these models and used them as a representation of who I should be, as these ideas started to prosper and I started to create a huge bias as to how women should look and what they should wear. Setting these expectations for myself has not allowed me to express who I really am. This all changed when I had a conversation with one of my aunts. She opened up my eyes to be whoever I want to be and do what I want to do. Her words really encouraged me and took a huge toll on me, therefore, now I worry less about they way I look and what I’m wearing. I used to feel very uncomfortable when I had to rush out of the house without makeup on and a nice outfit, and now I feel as if I have more time to be productive rather than worry about simple little details.
The confidence I had worked so hard to gain, all went down the drain as soon as I started high school. I started to feel very insecure of the way I looked and dressed, therefore, I took it upon myself to wake up super early every day in order to do my makeup and also choose an outfit accordingly. This started to get harder as the year continued because I wasn’t sleeping enough and I was just tired all the time. This routine continued for 2 years straight. That’s until I started my Junior year of high school, I decided that I wouldn’t have time to wear makeup all the time since I was going to be very busy completing all of my school work. This forced me to step out of my comfort zone and show up to school without any makeup on. What made this experience less awkward was that I started to get lots of compliments and that just made me feel more sure of myself. I struggled a lot with fighting my own self-image in order to live a happier life and I am now happy where I am.
Planning Sketches
Sketch 1: In the first sketch, I wanted to brainstorm and think about what I wanted to integrate into my final piece. I decided to sketch out a picture of me since the meaning of my piece has to do with an issue of acceptance I've dealt with. I also decided to sketch the type of flowers that I wanted to include in my final piece as my background as they would serve to symbolize beauty. I finally decided to take a picture of some purple lawn weeds in my backyard that caught my attention.
Sketch 2: In the second sketch, I started to work with my ideas in order to create a layout on how I want my final piece to look like. With this idea I intended to portray a feeling of happiness and beauty, but the final result wasn't want I was going for. This placement of organization sent me a feeling of dominance instead of a feeling of empowerment.
Sketch 3: In the third sketch, I started to rearrange my ideas until I finally came up with a placement that I wanted to go forward with. I made some side notes in order to remind me what I should include in each section.
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Inspiration
"Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937 by Pablo Picasso.” The Weeping Woman, 1937 by Pablo Picasso, www.pablopicasso.org/portrait-of-dora-maar.jsp#prettyPhoto.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941 by Pablo Picasso, www.pablopicasso.org/dora-maar-au-chat.jsp#prettyPhoto.
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I took inspiration from Pablo Picasso to create my piece since he has a powerful way of expressing his feelings through art. Pablo Picasso was a famous painter from Spain. Picasso created Portrait of Dora Maar in 1937 with an intention of expressing the way he felt towards a woman that the once loved. Dora Maar was a surrealist photographer from Argentina. Picasso and Maar met in 1936 in Paris and that’s when Maar started working for Picasso as his photographer. Their love just grew from there. When Picasso cut off all strings with Dora Maar, she decided to devote all of her time into Catholicism. This painting inspired my piece because Picasso seemed to have painted Maar with his own perception of beauty. The vibrant hues seem to symbolize her personality. Picasso also integrated lines in his piece in order to show texture. As you can see, Picasso applied unusual techniques to create these pieces in which he disfigured their faces to spread a powerful message of beauty. Similarly, Picasso created Dora Maar au Chat in 1941 with Dora Maar in thought. This indicates that Picasso had a profound love for Maar and he decided to express his feelings through his art. Similar to Portrait of Dora Maar Seated, Picasso decided to disfigure Maars’ face once again to show her beauty. I decided to use Picasso’s technique and disfigure my face for my final piece. I wanted to use Picasso’s interpretation in his pieces to give my piece a significant meaning of self-image. |
Collecting Images
Images Collected
Process
Experimentation
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Step 1: I started by creating a document that was 24 x 36 inches with a resolution of 170. I also started to read the tool’s description in order to get an idea of what tools I was going to use in my final piece. Step 2: I chose one of the pictures I wanted to include in my digital collage and I started to play with the “Liquify” setting. In this setting I selected the Twirl Clockwise Tool in order to create a swirl in my eyebrow. I then started to play with the Pucker Tool and the Bloat Tool in order to enlarge and shrink my facial features.
Step 3: When I was satisfied with they way I edited my face, I selected the Quick Selection Tool in order to select my face from the image. I then, used the Move Tool so move the selected section to my blank document. After doing this, I decided to apply an image I took of a sunset as my background. For the background I decided to play with it a little and add the Dissolve feature to it.
Step 4: I opened a new document so that I could chose the next picture I was going to use. Again, I used the Liquify setting and I started playing around with it’s options. I used the Twirl Clockwise Tool in order to create swirls in my face. I then proceeded to use the Pucker Tool in order to shrink my facial features and I also used the Bloat Tool in order to enlarge some of my facial features. At some point, I felt that I enlarged my nose too much, therefore, I went in with the Reconstruct Tool in order to tone it down a bit. I repeated the same steps for the following 4 pictures.
Step 5: I then used the Quick Selection Tool to select my face and I used the Move Tool to move the selection portion into my collage. Then, I used the Scale Tool in order to enlarge my image and I also used the Rotate Tool to rotate my picture and get it the angle I wanted it to be.
Step 6: I selected the picture on the top left corner with the Rectangular Marquee Tool and I decided to outline some of my facial features in order to integrate line into my piece and give it more dimension. To create the lines I used the Zoom Tool to zoom in the picture and get precise lines. I then selected the Brush Tool and changed the brush size to 14 so that the lines weren’t too thick and I also changed the opacity to 100 so that the lines could be visible.
Step 7: Then I selected the Brush Tool and selected the Magnetic Lasso Tool in order to create straight lines across my face to form triangles that would prepare me for the next step.
Step 8: I selected the Brush Tool and I changed the size of the brush to 14 and the pattern of the brush to Kyle’s Screentons 38 in order to fill in the triangles that I had previously created with the Magnetic Lasso Tool. Before filling in the tringles, I used the color gradient pad on the right in order to select the colors vivid yellow, hot pink, and forest green to fill in 3 triangles in my face with different colors.
Step 9: Halfway through my collage, I decided to change my background to a picture of leaves that I had previously taken with my IPhone camera. I didn’t feel as if the sunset tied the picture in correctly. I did this by opening a new document with the picture I was going to use. I then used the Quick Selection Tool to select the whole picture and I used the Move Tool to move the selected image to my collage. I then used the Scale Tool in order to enlarge the picture and fit it in my collage.
Step 10: For the final step, I decided to take one of my pictures and select my eye with the Quick Selection Tool and use the Move Tool in order to move it and place it in my collage. Afterwards I used the Scale Tool to resize the eye and enlarge it and I rotated the eye with the Rotate Tool.
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When I first started to create my Digital Collage, I was contemplating whether I wanted to have a sunset background because I thought it would symbolize beauty. Halfway through my process I noticed that the background didn’t really tie in with the my theme since I was using warm and dark colors throughout my collage. Furthermore, I took the decision to change my background to a darker image of purple lawn weeds that I had taken specifically for this project. I also decided to add some abstract art on my face in order to replicate the idea that Picasso was going for when he created his pieces. I also made sure to create this piece with warmer tones in mind in order to create a feeling of weakness and optimism.
Comparison:
Similarities:
~ Follows a warm color scheme throughout the piece.
~ Abstract art techniques were used in order to add definition. ~ These pieces were intended to send out a feeling empowerment and optimism. |
Differences:
~ Picasso created his pieces with the intention of spreading his message in regards of the love he felt for Dora Maar, unlike my piece “Enough”, which was created to get a point across of a feeling of lack of acceptance.
~ Line is mainly integrated into Picasso's’ pieces in order to make the piece look put together, unlike my piece in which I integrated abstract art on the face to achieve a more sharp final result. ~ Picasso’s pieces both include either a warm color scheme or a dark color scheme, unlike my piece which includes both. |
Critique:
My final piece has some similarities and some differences from Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Maar Seated and Dora Maar au Chat. In my piece, I was inspired by Picasso’s intention in portraying beauty in a way in which it is not commonly viewed. I also decided to integrate line and vivid hues into my piece similar to picasso in order to portray a feeling of empowerment and optimism. However, I did not integrate a color scheme on my final piece such as Picasso because I figured that I would like to add color into my piece in a way that expresses emotion. Our pieces were created distinct since they both have different meaning for example, Picasso made his paintings with an intention of expressing love and beauty and I created my piece with an intention of expressing self-image and acceptance.
Reflection
I put a lot of time and effort into finishing my Digital Collage and I am very satisfied with the end result. The first and hardest step was to find an artist who you could take inspiration from in order to create your piece. This was one of the hardest steps because you had to find an artist that has created artwork that can relate to your main idea for your digital collage. Once I finally found an artist, I had to start playing around with photoshop and start to experiment with the tools in order to get an idea of which tools you were going to use in order to create your final piece. Integrating color and line started to get a bit difficult as the the steps went on because I had to integrate these elements while maintaining the meaning of my piece. I believe that doing more research and finding various artist artwork would have improved my final piece in a way that I would have many more sources to take inspiration from other than just one artist. I feel like I did a good job in integrating texture into my piece as I started to disfigure it. Overall, I feel as if my final piece came out good and there’s a few tweaks that could be made when it comes to how clean it looks, but I feel like I did great in preserving the meaning of my piece throughout this lengthy process.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Maar Seated inspired me to integrate line and color in my digital collage in order to express emotion and Head of A Woman inspired me to portray a feeling of acceptance in my piece in order to show how self-image can be deceiving.
- The overall approach Picasso has regarding his artwork was to portray a feeling of love and a different perception of beauty that is not commonly seen. This inspired me to create my piece based around self-image and the way that society affects one’s feeling of acceptance.
- While researching, I discovered the impact that one’s feelings has when creating art. Picasso’s work is centered in his feelings and his previous lovers. Hee tries to use art to spread ideas and important aspects of self-image.
- The central idea revolving my research was the struggle of accepting yourself and not revolving your ideas of beauty amongst social media.
Bibliography:
“Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937 by Pablo Picasso.” The Weeping Woman, 1937 by Pablo Picasso, www.pablopicasso.org/portrait-of-dora-maar.jsp#prettyPhoto.
“Head of a Woman (Dora Maar).” Guggenheim, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3450.
Guggenheim, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/pablo-picasso.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941 by Pablo Picasso, www.pablopicasso.org/dora-maar-au-chat.jsp#prettyPhoto.