Digital CollageExhibition Text:
"Spotlight" conveys my struggle between valuing communication with work throughout my life based around a reflective essay. This piece was created digitally using my own photographs and editing through photopea, and is inspired by Tommy Ingberg with his limited use of elements, along with Rene Magritte by their contrast of what is and isn't visible. The Digital Collage highlights the ideology that Surrealism brought to expressing an artist's abstract feelings. Text: "Spotlight"
Size: 60.96cm x 91.44cm Medium: Photopea Art Piece Completion: October 2022 |
Reflective Essay
Having a speech impediment when I was younger made many of the options I would initially have for a foundation very limited to me, as I couldn’t follow the same path of education originally intended by my family. Communication is a very key part of my life as I grew up from this mindset and felt like it was always the aspect that would be set back compared to those around me. This feeling only exemplified from being a bilingual speaker, as I learned Spanish later in my life than what would be idle, resulting in me not being as fluent in the language. So already I struggled with what I consider a very important trait for me to have, since being a good communicator is now something that as I get older seems more highly considered by others then solely being a hard worker.
This wasn’t something that I really thought about initially, as I always had this thought process where doing a lot of high quality work would always result in the same sense of accomplishment. Over time when I got more opportunities, the reality of the situation became more apparent, as my most recent example of this was actually last summer. I essentially had these two weeks where I was doing two early college credit math classes with midterm exams, working at my job, and practicing dances back to back for a Quinceneara that was planned at the end of those two weeks. Apart from having to accommodate an inconvenient schedule, I felt like I lost a sense of control, since my daily routine would usually look like waking up early to do online college classes, consisting of daily videos and homework assignments, then trying to schedule a dance practice so that I could understand the steps for each song since I couldn’t make some of them, which would often lead to me booking it to my job right after due to the changes, only to end the day staying up past midnight to finish the rest of my college work and prepare for any exams that were planned.
The only two thoughts I really had during this time was that I didn’t want to disappoint others if I made a commitment and didn’t follow through with it, but also that as long as I was doing a lot of work, that it would always be worth the effort. Of course I felt a huge sense of relief once these events were over, but I had spent so much time trying to take advantages of opportunities, not just the ones previously mentioned, that I really didn’t balance the time I needed for myself and to be social to justify the amount of stress from work I put on myself just before the school year started. The feeling that I had was difficult to express, particularly to others, that I put this spotlight on myself to solely have this belief that I could be doing more when I had free time, that it made me devalue when I wanted to do something that made me content but wasn’t particularly useful in the way that it was preparing for my future. Breaking out of this belief and establishing that I can comfortably express myself without feeling the need to block out the world around me to constantly work as a core value has been difficult, but the acknowledgement of this mindset where I do feel miscommunicated and overlooked has shown to be helpful to pursue and dedicate more of my time to than originally thought of.
This wasn’t something that I really thought about initially, as I always had this thought process where doing a lot of high quality work would always result in the same sense of accomplishment. Over time when I got more opportunities, the reality of the situation became more apparent, as my most recent example of this was actually last summer. I essentially had these two weeks where I was doing two early college credit math classes with midterm exams, working at my job, and practicing dances back to back for a Quinceneara that was planned at the end of those two weeks. Apart from having to accommodate an inconvenient schedule, I felt like I lost a sense of control, since my daily routine would usually look like waking up early to do online college classes, consisting of daily videos and homework assignments, then trying to schedule a dance practice so that I could understand the steps for each song since I couldn’t make some of them, which would often lead to me booking it to my job right after due to the changes, only to end the day staying up past midnight to finish the rest of my college work and prepare for any exams that were planned.
The only two thoughts I really had during this time was that I didn’t want to disappoint others if I made a commitment and didn’t follow through with it, but also that as long as I was doing a lot of work, that it would always be worth the effort. Of course I felt a huge sense of relief once these events were over, but I had spent so much time trying to take advantages of opportunities, not just the ones previously mentioned, that I really didn’t balance the time I needed for myself and to be social to justify the amount of stress from work I put on myself just before the school year started. The feeling that I had was difficult to express, particularly to others, that I put this spotlight on myself to solely have this belief that I could be doing more when I had free time, that it made me devalue when I wanted to do something that made me content but wasn’t particularly useful in the way that it was preparing for my future. Breaking out of this belief and establishing that I can comfortably express myself without feeling the need to block out the world around me to constantly work as a core value has been difficult, but the acknowledgement of this mindset where I do feel miscommunicated and overlooked has shown to be helpful to pursue and dedicate more of my time to than originally thought of.
Inspiration
Stone Part One - Tommy Ingberg
When it came to putting my reflective essay into a visual form, the first art movement that came to mind was Surrealism, in which it was often used to interpret an abstract feeling that the artist wants to express. "Stone Part One" follows this same mindset, with their scaled back composition that emphasizes a boulder projected above the character, with solely an umbrella to stop it that is all layered over a black and white color. The limited elements that I mentioned emphasizes the artist wanting the viewer to have their own interpretation of what is happening and the story being told. It's very deliberate the techniques Ingberg uses not only in this artwork, but all of his surrealist photographs that encourage the audience to fill those gaps. In the Block Print that I completed previously, I did utilize a similar perspective of limiting the elements of my artworks, and I believe using a comparable mind set with Tommy Ingberg's work will better highlight the elements that are present, and allow my audience to achieve that same opportunity of interpreting the work without the needing to have read my reflective essay influencing the piece.
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The Son of Man - Rene Magritte
Understanding that I wanted to pursue a digital collage that was fueled by surrealism, I thought that looking at artworks that are heavily associated with the art movement could make the traits I want to convey much more significant. "The Son of Man" is a great example of this, as Magritte draws attention to a central character with the contrasting foreground to background, that has an everyday item, in this case an apple, blocking the person's expression. Here the artist wants to twist the viewer's perception by making them question what is and isn't visible, following that same idea of wanting to be open to multiple interpretations. From this artwork, I want to make use of a common object being the barrier of what the viewer can and cannot see, resulting in it becoming the prime focus of what is being analyzed.
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Planning
Following up finding and analyzing my inspirations, for the start of my planning phase I wanted to take that research and break it down to some of the core elements I mentioned before. One of most important similarities that I found between "Stone Part One" and "The Son of Man" was that their attributes for making the artwork able to motivate ideas and thoughts from the viewers was crucial in expressing the abstract feelings that come from surrealism into a visual form by taking, editing, and manipulating my own images. If I could come up with an idea that encompassed a majority of the same attributes that I listed in my analysis on the right, then I would be ensured that the statement from my reflective essay can be represented effectively.
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This brings us to the "Drowning" Idea, which would be created by taking a photo of a fish tank filled with water and a black background. Then separately, I would take a picture of my face and overlay it with one of the screens. Within the screen would be an image of my desk where I often spent hours working virtually, and this character would be repeated across the canvas (There would possibly be a sort of purple, distorted eye added to the black background that would give the impression of feeling watched). Taking many of the similarities this idea has to my analysis, it became clear to me that many elements were present, making the audience interaction with the piece much more limited. What I did appreciate about the concept was that it would allow a deeper meaning to be shown, but I believed that I could simplify it to better go along with trying to limit the features I can showcase to bring greater emphasis.
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The much simpler alteration comes in the form of the "Overwhelmed" Idea, which would most likely be created by taking a photo of the subject that is working with a mask on as their everyday item (which I wasn't certain what the pose would be, but the rough idea still had value), and having work be repeated as the background. Whilst pulling the process off may seem simple at first, I believe that it would leave room for alterations along the way, especially with the photopea software that I'll touch on later on, that will have more spotlight then if they weren't given the benefits that come from being the only limited elements present.
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Process
Even though in my planning stages I narrowed my digital collage to the "Overwhelmed" idea, I decided that I wanted to try the start of the process with elements of the "Drowning" idea in order to get used to learning and developing the techniques I needed on the photopea software. The first component I wanted to work on was cropping an image, and in my sketch I followed the idea of using an everyday object, in this case a monitor, to make the facial expression non-visible like in "The Son of Man". Now the computer screens I did have were either curved, or had branding on the border that I didn't want to get into, in addition, I wanted to lean more towards a boxed perimeter. So instead of trying to make the screen you see on the left work for my image, I took a square box that I had in my room and planned to crop it out to only leave the black border.
Right before that, I captured a picture of my desk setup where I've primarily been situated when I had to work from home (which only became more of a norm to me after the pandemic and virtual classes, so it felt fitting to use). It took a couple of attempts to properly crop out the inside of the box and place the image in, but you can see on the left the product I came up with in the end. To further this practice concept before starting my final idea, I did test out and showcase one of the variety of effects that are available to my image, in this case color overlay, that I believe could spark many creative ideas as I continued my process and in the experimentation phases. Now that I experienced the most prominent elements I expected to include in my final art piece, I moved forward by starting similarly and took photos first. After taking a large variety of photos in different poses, I narrowed it down to the one you see on the right, as I thought it best represented the "overwhelmed" feeling I had, whilst being a much more subtle body expression. One noteworthy feature I discovered after I took these photos on my iPhone was this brand new cutout tool that would automatically cut out people from photos that would be intended to be sent as stickers to others through messages. The accuracy of this tool is quite surprising, and I considered using it instead of going through the process of cropping out myself from the background, but there were some components of the image (such as my elbow and hand) that would become blurry and partly transparent from the cutout tool. This led to the pain-staking procedure of having to crop the image by doing a very rough outline, then zooming in to outline myself so that the software could properly crop it and not cause the transparency problem I was having before. When you crop out an image, having a black background makes these imperfections much more noticeable, so I did add a color overlay to my image to add a new style differentiation, and to fit more of the monochrome color scheme seen in the "Stone Part One" artwork. To wrap out my digital collage, I created a google doc with a black background where I repeated the word "Work" with a decreasing size and minimal margins on the page. I placed the edited picture of myself onto of the background, and changed the color overlay to better compliment both elements, and this all leads up to my final product, visible on the right side. Now compared to the image on the top of the website, there is still one more component that I included but haven't touched on yet, but I believe that in the following experimentation section, it will reveal how I added more depth and better complementing objects by trying out the effects available. Compared to my practice idea that initially started with, I believe that the simplistic aspects that I saw present in both my inspirations carried over more effectively with the concept I followed through with, and taking the time to gain at the very least a basic background of how the different photos can interact with each other was very beneficial in this process. |
Experimentation
One of the noteworthy advantages that came with using a photo editing software like photopea was having effects I could play with on each layer in order to manipulate the image in ways I wouldn't be able to do as seamlessly on a physical artwork, especially with the final product. On the left you can see the options that were presented to me, which each had a very distinct effect on the image, so when it came to discovering them, I mainly focused on exploring two. The first one was color overlay, since one of the problems I faced with having a black background was that the imperfections that showed up after cropping my image were much more evident than a white background. Instead of having to go back into google docs to make these changes, it was much easier to test different colored backgrounds and fonts before deciding on one that inverted the original colors.
As mentioned towards the end of my process, experimenting brought me to the last component I wanted to showcase in my digital collage, which was from trying out inner shadows. Being able to highlight a corner of my background whilst adding a shadow on the other end was a simple change, but brought more emphasis to the feeling of being overwhelmed, and is what inspired me to change the title to the current "Spotlight" one. I did have to funnel through many poses and objects included to spot the final one I wanted to include, but here you can see an example of one that used a body expression to emphasize more a feeling of extreme stress. I also tried to see if I could tackle the idea of an everyday item blocking what is visible by using a wooden hand (which I also tried out the cutout tool on as seen on the left). It's good to briefly mention that many of these prominent alterations weren't always planned, but mainly was the process of trial and error to see what worked and what didn't. |
Critique
Similarities
- Emphasis on viewer interpretations: As all the artworks utilize the Surrealism art movement to express their own abstract feelings, it makes one of the key intentions of the work to allow the audience to have their own perspective or understanding on what the artist is trying to represent.
- Elements present are limited: To follow up the previous point, in order to help emphasize the different viewer interpretations, all the artists choose to limit the components they showcase.
- Facial Expression covered by everyday item (Left): Most notable with "The Son of Man", our artworks take advantage of the space and placement of an everyday item to cover the central character's facial expression and make the viewer question what is and isn't visible.
- Monochrome color scheme utilized (Right): Particularly with the "Stone Part One" artwork, both our pieces highlight the exclusive use of a monochrome color scheme.
Differences
- Contrasting body posture: As both inspiration artworks tend to have their central character with an up-right, confident pose, my piece shows their body expression with a slouched and subtle body language.
- Cluttered Background (Left): For "The son of Man", we can see that Magritte chooses to contrast his foreground with opposing hues in the background. Since my digital collage only uses a monochrome color scheme, my foreground is contrasted by text being repeated until it's overwhelming.
- Utilizing composition (Right): In "Stone Part One", in order to capture the scale of the scene, Ingberg uses a scaled back composition, whilst in my piece I want the viewer to imagine what the scale could be, so my composition is a more enclosed and forward shot.
- Emphasis on viewer interpretations: As all the artworks utilize the Surrealism art movement to express their own abstract feelings, it makes one of the key intentions of the work to allow the audience to have their own perspective or understanding on what the artist is trying to represent.
- Elements present are limited: To follow up the previous point, in order to help emphasize the different viewer interpretations, all the artists choose to limit the components they showcase.
- Facial Expression covered by everyday item (Left): Most notable with "The Son of Man", our artworks take advantage of the space and placement of an everyday item to cover the central character's facial expression and make the viewer question what is and isn't visible.
- Monochrome color scheme utilized (Right): Particularly with the "Stone Part One" artwork, both our pieces highlight the exclusive use of a monochrome color scheme.
Differences
- Contrasting body posture: As both inspiration artworks tend to have their central character with an up-right, confident pose, my piece shows their body expression with a slouched and subtle body language.
- Cluttered Background (Left): For "The son of Man", we can see that Magritte chooses to contrast his foreground with opposing hues in the background. Since my digital collage only uses a monochrome color scheme, my foreground is contrasted by text being repeated until it's overwhelming.
- Utilizing composition (Right): In "Stone Part One", in order to capture the scale of the scene, Ingberg uses a scaled back composition, whilst in my piece I want the viewer to imagine what the scale could be, so my composition is a more enclosed and forward shot.
Reflection
Transitioning from the Block Print that involved understanding physical techniques to the Digital Collage that brought greater emphasis to manipulating and editing photos online in order to create the art piece brought a brand new perspective and set of skills that needed to be refined and implemented. One of the most prominent instances of this throughout the entire process was understanding the photopea software and all the features it brought with it, as I would develop techniques, such as cropping out and refining the edge of images in order for the placement of objects in new backgrounds to be as seamless as it could be, that would not held it's greatest benefit if I didn't fully comprehend how to utilize it. Since my inspiration was fueled by the Surrealism Art Movement, it dictated and encouraged me to only present the elements that were most relevant to emphasize in order for the digital collage to both convey the feeling I expressed in my reflective essay and allow the viewer to have their own input.
To follow up, the biggest challenge that became apparent to me was trying to pinpoint the important elements that I did want to highlight, as when you limit what you're able to present, it makes your choices just as significant, which was a concept that I struggled with in my block print that required me to simplify buildings in order to fit the medium I was working in. While having to figure out how to funnel through my ideas to pick the best one was off putting, I did very much enjoy the experimentation that the software offered with the wide variety of effects you could play with on each layer. I do hope that the Surrealist inspiration carries over to my work, and it becomes clear to my audience as they view it without necessarily needing the message to be read about from my reflective essay.
To follow up, the biggest challenge that became apparent to me was trying to pinpoint the important elements that I did want to highlight, as when you limit what you're able to present, it makes your choices just as significant, which was a concept that I struggled with in my block print that required me to simplify buildings in order to fit the medium I was working in. While having to figure out how to funnel through my ideas to pick the best one was off putting, I did very much enjoy the experimentation that the software offered with the wide variety of effects you could play with on each layer. I do hope that the Surrealist inspiration carries over to my work, and it becomes clear to my audience as they view it without necessarily needing the message to be read about from my reflective essay.
Connecting to ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The core values of Surrealism that set the foundation for Tommy Ingberg and Rene Magritte's work were crucial in planning the most important aspects I wanted to incorporate in my digital collage. This is most evident with how my reflective essay, which is what my artwork is further based on, benefits from following the same principles as the art movement that is meant to express abstract feelings or thoughts.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Tommy Ingberg brought the point of view that his audience could convey a story forming through his artworks if he scaled back his composition and limited the components to only the most significant for each scene. Similarly, Rene Magritte wanted his work to bring different understandings of what was the meaning by utilizing everyday objects to experiment with what is visible against what isn't for the viewer.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The idea of a artist wanting to use Surrealism to represent a abstract feeling or thought to others seems that regardless of the people who followed the same principles when the movement started, or those who pursue the same mindset today aren't placing many complicated and detailed components in their work, since even for the artist it's hard to exactly pinpoint what that feeling is, so they often do well from simplifying that feeling to others in the artwork.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme consisted of visualizing the abstract feeling of balancing communication and work that can be expressed and spark different interpretations from others.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Artists can motivate a viewer to a thought process or to close in on focal points of the piece by restricting components that aren't as important, such as using a monochrome color scheme and form placement, that makes the aspects that are present much more significant for being analyzed.
The core values of Surrealism that set the foundation for Tommy Ingberg and Rene Magritte's work were crucial in planning the most important aspects I wanted to incorporate in my digital collage. This is most evident with how my reflective essay, which is what my artwork is further based on, benefits from following the same principles as the art movement that is meant to express abstract feelings or thoughts.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Tommy Ingberg brought the point of view that his audience could convey a story forming through his artworks if he scaled back his composition and limited the components to only the most significant for each scene. Similarly, Rene Magritte wanted his work to bring different understandings of what was the meaning by utilizing everyday objects to experiment with what is visible against what isn't for the viewer.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The idea of a artist wanting to use Surrealism to represent a abstract feeling or thought to others seems that regardless of the people who followed the same principles when the movement started, or those who pursue the same mindset today aren't placing many complicated and detailed components in their work, since even for the artist it's hard to exactly pinpoint what that feeling is, so they often do well from simplifying that feeling to others in the artwork.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme consisted of visualizing the abstract feeling of balancing communication and work that can be expressed and spark different interpretations from others.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Artists can motivate a viewer to a thought process or to close in on focal points of the piece by restricting components that aren't as important, such as using a monochrome color scheme and form placement, that makes the aspects that are present much more significant for being analyzed.
Citations
Artincontext. (2022, February 21). "the son of man" Magritte - an analysis of the famous Apple Painting. artincontext.org. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://artincontext.org/the-son-of-man-magritte/
Florin, B. (2011, October 31). Reality rearranged: Black and white surrealist photography. Photography Office. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from http://www.photographyoffice.com/blog/2011/10/reality-rearranged-black-and-white-surrealist-photography-by-tommy-ingberg
Florin, B. (2011, October 31). Reality rearranged: Black and white surrealist photography. Photography Office. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from http://www.photographyoffice.com/blog/2011/10/reality-rearranged-black-and-white-surrealist-photography-by-tommy-ingberg