Mood Boards

 This mood board consists of the artists who I am basing my work upon. Seen above is the work of Storm Thorgerson, Duane Michaels, Gregory Crewdson, Richie Valezquez, Tyler Spangler and Sister Corita Kent. I have attempted recreations of all six of these artists and am pleased with most of the recreations and will be making further attempts once I have my tablet. This may allow me to produce more work of a higher quality and be able to replicate their styles better.

 Seen above is a mood board consisting of my own work inspired by the aforementioned six artists. Some have only one piece whereas others have several pieces. I am pleased with how most of these turned out and am excited to take these ideas further, namely the environmental photography stuff. The Thorgerson, Michaels and Crewdson recreations could be a lot better if I spent more time on them. 

 Once I have my new tablet, which—once re-ordered on the 29th of this month due to the original order being cancelled—should arrive around the 31st of this month or the 1st of November, I will be able to set it up, bring it into college and work further on these pieces with more attention to detail, more time to make further adjustments and tweaks and more precision especially regarding the graphic design elements, this being the Valezquez, Spangler and Kent recreations.

 The Kent recreations are from my graphics course and were not created specifically for photography, although I plan to print those pieces out—or to create them entirely traditionally—and photograph myself alongside them, much like how many of Kent's photos include her stood next to her own work.

Spangler Recreation

In order to recreate Tyler Spangler's work, I looked at various pieces of his and combined certain ideas, i.e. chromatic aberration, a black and white background image and a cartoony drawn element atop it, this being a photo of my hand drawn over with a cartoonist brush and filled in with various purples, with darker tones for shadows and lighter tones for highlights.

 I finished off the standard flat purple colour with a soft gradient to add a slight shadow to it due to it being a part of my art style. I also added custom chromatic aberration behind a rough cutout of myself as I saw that being a theme in Spangler's work, although may not have had enough time in this session to fully explore the idea and execute it properly, although it is only a minor detail here and thankfully does not distract from the main illustrative element.

 I am happy with how this piece turned out as I created it on a whim and was originally only planning to create another Dela Deso recreation, yet decided to tackle Tyler Spangler instead to see what I was capable of, and I am proud of what I have achieved. To improve in the future, I plan to use a less detailed, thicker brush, more vibrant and thematic colours, i.e. red, yellow and blue, and to add more detail and focus more on the background photo as well as the foreground elements.

Deso Recreation

Using my old graphics tablet and Photoshop, I was able to produce this recreation of Deso's work and am pleased with how it turned out. Previously, I had used a sharpie, paper and a scanner before deciding the lines were too thick, there was too little detail and the lineart itself distracted from the main piece. The layers for the sharpie lineart and respective colour placeholders remain in the Photoshop file, so I may go back, finish those up and document those at some point to show my progression.

 As for the colours themselves, I chose a nice soothing gradient from Photoshop's sample gradients, namely one that started off light at the top and changed both tone and hue as it went down. The eye colours I chose are in reference to one way I drew myself with yellow sclerae with pink blood vessels, dark blue irises increasing in tone as it drew toward the pupil, and, albeit not in this piece, bright pink pupils with an added shine overall. Of course, in this more realistic piece, I did not include that cartoony aspect, although it would be interesting to explore for the other lineart set.

Recreations

My current photography project has similar themes from various different artists and I am excited and inspired to look into them further by recreating their works. One of my first shoots was a recreation of the work of Duane Michaels by taking a series of photos in which a scene gradually changes via the introduction of more props, in this case, various sketchbooks, booklets, office supplies and sheets of paper. These photos were taken in my bedroom using my ceiling light as the lighting. The first photo was taken a while before the rest, so the lighting varies marginally.

This second piece took inspiration from Storm Thorgerson's work; in some of his photos, most of the sky is visible with the ground at the very bottom, or a dichotomy of land and sky. Essentially, there is a balance or imbalance of the ground and the sky which I attempted to emulate in this piece. By photographing my willow tree and having the rest of the image be the night sky, the light and dark contrast is high.

 Composition-wise, this shot was very easy to produce and only took one step—sit on the ground looking up. By sitting in my front doorway and pointing the camera upwards, maybe 45 degrees upwards, and aligning elements of the willow tree with the edges of the screen, I snapped this photo. It wasn't until after I took the photo that I noticed a streetlamp's light peering through in the background, which I found to be a nice addition, giving it a more warm, less sinister vibe.

 These next few pieces were inspired by Gregory Crewdson, whose work appears to look straight out of a movie, with characters sat or stood still in candid wide-shots of unsettling environments with an elegiac aura. Whether it's the models themselves, the environments, the tone of the image or the composition, there is always a perturbing element within Crewdson's work.

 The first piece, I took laying on my bed with my legs outstretched. I took inspiration for the composition from Thorgerson, with the balance of the bed and the curtains with a figure in the middle, although tone and colour-wise, it is Crewdson-inspired. The slight glare of the light outside seen through the curtains seems to disturb the flow of the image and distract from the center focal point, although I won't let that ruin it all for me. The lighting is simply the harsh glow of my television and computer monitor on which I had the same imagery to make the lighting fair.

 The aura of the image evokes a disturbed and attempted relaxation session whilst something is wrong in the figure's mind. The unsettled positioning of the legs, the cold lighting, the darkness across from the bed reflecting the uncertainty, and perhaps the light outside being the lingering thought or the wrong in the world that bothers them.

 The imagery on the screens across from my bed were that of the cover for the album April Fools by The Scary Jokes. I chose to listen to this album as I took this series of photos in order to help influence the vibe I was hoping these images would give off. The album itself has been described as "the best sad clown music", which is akin to what feeling I was hoping to portray in these images.

 The two smaller screens are that of my Nintendo Switch Lite and my iPhone, on which I was playing the same video. On all screens, the brightness was turned up all the way, although the sound was only playing on my television, as that would have produced the most noise. To me, this image represents addiction and obsession with a specific idea or topic which applies to myself. The album and the artist behind it are very fascinating to me and I have an odd addiction to their work, so I portrayed that addiction through this piece.

 I took this photo after applying a random setting to the DSLR camera I was borrowing at the time, which turned out to be surprisingly good. The rich, vibrant blues and purples contrasting with the oranges and yellows struck me. The lighting was produced with near similar properties to that of the previous image, with only the television screen producing the harsh light. Overall, this series of images was very fun to produce, and with further adjustments, I could see the latter two fitting into the Crewdson aesthetic, i.e. further-distanced shots, different lighting, different camera settings, further Photoshop adjustments, et cetera. However, I am happy with it as it is.

 In my graphic design course, I have produced two pieces in the style of Sister Corita Kent's work, whom I mentioned in my previous post and whom I plan to recreate for this project, too. The process will be slightly different, however. First, I plan to construct the piece as usual, with paper, a craft knife, glue and a scanner, before compiling it in Photoshop. Then, I will have the piece printed in A3, trimmed down, stuck onto a wall and then photographed with a figure alongside it. Many photos of Kent feature her and her works, so I supposed this would be an ideal addition, seeing as the theme of her work itself is fairly surreal and abstract. If it can be psychedelic, it can be surreal. I may also use the aforementioned process but attempt to create it all traditionally and then photographing it.

 I plan to execute my ideas for Spangler recreations when I have my graphics tablet, and I will also be able to further develop my Kent recreations. On top of that, I will be able to appropriately create Valezquez-inspired pieces as I can add and take away as much detail as I please and experiment with colour in a very wide variety. By using the tablet as opposed to a printed image, a lightbox and a sharpie, I can make immediate changes to parts of the raw image file rather than having to go through a long process several times with large room for errors.

 The rest of the images here are the other photos I took.

Surreal Project Planning Continued

Going into my second year at college, I have decided to attempt to create—or recreate—surreal artwork via the use of various art programs, such as Photoshop, PaintNET and FireAlpaca. I will be able to use both FireAlpaca and, to a much greater extent due to plugins, PaintNET at home. Currently, I will be producing preliminary sketches of my ideas of what I plan to create. This is all subject to change.

 First, we have “Lightheaded”, created by self-taught hobbyist Christophe Kiciak. Depicted here is a woman with a detached head on what looks to be a leash, akin to a balloon on a string, riding a bicycle along a dirt path. On either side of the path appears to be fields of flowers, and ahead of the path among the warped hills appear to be large hands preparing to grab onto something. There is also a light ahead of the pathway in-between the hands, and a full moon in the top left-hand corner, despite a stormy dusk-esque sky.

 This image may represent birth or death, i.e. the light at the end and the hands either side, either representing a doctor’s hands reaching for a baby, or the hands of a godly figure reaching for the spirit of a dead person to bring them into heaven. These are just my interpretations and are far fetched, so both of these are unlikely. As the title is “Lightheaded”, I’m lead to believe this is a derealisation-based episode or hallucinations as a result of, for example, decreased blood volume around the brain or use of various forms of hallucinogenic substances.

 My second chosen piece is a more modern approach to surrealism with more blatant symbolism by connecting the objects that give meaning, i.e. in this piece, the rock being the bad, the balloons being the good, and the man being a conduit to represent humanity when given choices with restrictions or limitations. By having the rock tied via rope to the man's ankles, it is apparent this is to weigh him down, as it carries a resemblance to concrete shoes used to anchor someone, albeit in this case, it is not for the sake of physical murder, but perhaps psychological murder.

 I previously analysed and recreated Ingberg's work in my secondary school photography course; my chosen piece featured a man's head in the typical Ingberg-esque attire—a suit and bowler hat—with his face removed, appearing shattered like a broken window, and revealing a brick wall behind it, perhaps as a nod to the adage of talking to a brick wall. This new chosen piece could be the reverse of the idea of co-existence; one thing can happen without the other, whereas usually, ideas need to co-exist in order to function.

 Returning to the more Dali-esque side of surrealism—where it is not weird for the sake of being weird, but rather having meaning and structure behind it, with symbolism and pragmatic, thought-provoking visual elements—I have taken to a list of surreal photographs with ‘unknown’ artists, with this piece catching my eye.

 I wanted to find similar pieces after I had discovered a piece identical to this one, with a pipe instead of an egg, so I found this image on the list, saved it, reverse-image searched it and found it again on Google Images with a link to a Pinterest page, which then linked to a DeviantArt page, this thankfully being the actual artist’s page. The artist behind this piece is a Turkish DA-based woman named Aksam Gunesi, pseudonomically known as beyzayildirim77, and she creates tons of fascinating, obscure pieces, including variations—a series—of pieces akin to this one, with various other objects  / food items in place of the egg, i.e. an apple or a roll of sushi.

 If I am to draw inspiration from this artist, it may be the majority of my surreal pieces going into my second year, as this is essentially the ideal structure of what I wish to produce; a very clear and concise piece with a less-is-more feeling to it, akin to what Dali created. 

 My fourth chosen piece is a classic, iconic for its iconography, and renowned for its influence in art as a whole and the theme of surrealism. Painted by Salvador Dali in 1931, this piece has shaped the art of surrealism and defined what it means to envision surreal scenarios as a whole. It's totally plausible, having a dream or vision of melting pocket-watches on the beach.

 In order to recreate this, as with my plans for my Ingberg recreation, I will need to combine photographic elements with digitally drawn elements using various art programs such as FireAlpaca and PaintNET, both of which I use extensively at home. By combining the digital elements, I may be able to either add drawn elements that look more like stylised realism or to filter and tweak photographs to have them appear drawn.

 For my fifth piece, I have chosen to look at the work of John Brosio who specialises in photo-manipulation / illustration of natural disasters, most commonly tornadoes and hurricanes, although some are accompanied with figures standing by looking on as if nothing was happening, and some are taking place in small towns.

 Due to the photo-realistic nature of the images, albeit they either are painted, presumably with references, or either filtered, I will be applying a presumed similar process by taking photos, adding slight filters and effects for a touch of a traditional artwork feel and the occasional illustrative element to tidy things up.

 As this piece features giant crows destroying a small town rather than it being the result or in-the-moment happening of a twister, I found it more amusing and, of course, easier to create. My idea for this is to photograph streets at a distance so there's plenty of ample room to put things in the environment, i.e. in the streets or skies as in this piece, and to photograph animals to put there. Since I have two cats and a dog, I will be able to use them as my 'models'.

 It is worth noting at this point that my original final artist had to be changed due to the chosen piece being misleading—the photography I originally believed to be of Joan Miro's own work turned out to be a teacher's piece inspired by Miro. As much as I would have loved to carry on with this artist, he did not photograph his work. It may not have worked out either as it was not photography itself, but rather fine art, although the element of it being photographed would have lent some credence to my idea being acceptable within this project. I will continue to attempt research into a sixth artist, although I may have to branch out away from my chosen theme a bit as most modern surreal photography is too complex for my level of skill.

 As of the start of October, the vision for my project has changed drastically, but in a good way which will allow me to progress properly and in a direction I am both comfortable and happy with, which also introduces an element I was hoping to include within this project, that being drawn elements. I can do this by drawing cartoony graphics over photographs which suits my personal style a lot better and makes my life easier. I've scrapped the previous artists in place of five new ones, two of which I studied in my secondary school photography GCSE course, so I have more experience to base my work on.

 I've compiled two mood boards containing the works of Storm Thorgerson, Duane Michaels, Gregory Crewdson, Richie Valezquez—pseudonomically Dela Deso—and Tyler Spangler. I plan to add one more artist, as six is the requirement, and to dedicate a mood board on its own to their work to balance out the load. I have also drawn several plans plotting how I plan to go about these shoots.

 My choices for each artist is simple; they all have vastly different and unique styles that are relatively easy to recreate, for which I will detail in a list below alongside my illustrated and annotated shoot plans.

 Thorgerson's consist of abstract ideas such as objects in places they're not supposed to be, or portrait shots with the sky taking up the majority of the space, with barely any other elements at work.

 Michaels' consist of black and white shots, either singular or a series, the latter I plan to recreate as they are his conduit to convey a surreal narrative, i.e. a room gradually filling with potted plants or a woman angling a handheld mirror to produce strange reflections.

 Crewdson's consist of wide-angle shots, essentially panoramas, of still life in gloomy and moody environments, typically one figure among an otherwise empty 50s-style household, or in a cabin out in the snowy wilderness.

 Valezquez's consist of photographs of models and famous figures with grimy graphics drawn on top, namely their skin or clothes, to make them appear slime or zombie-like. This is especially due to the melting skin beneath their white, vacant eyes. Bright, vivid colours often in gradients or in akin gamuts are splashed inside thick and highly-detailed lineart.

 Spangler's consist of photographs of models and famous figures with cartoony graphics drawn on top, often hands or facial features, sometimes slime, akin to Valezquez. Bold and consistently-weighted lineart filled with few colours or gradients are what make Spangler's pieces iconic, that and his other work involving warping and distorting a face, either by making it appear as if it were melting or cutting it in half and having colourful shapes flying out.

 All of these artists clearly have very well established styles that will all take different routes to recreate, whether it be setting up the shoot, how it is shot, how it is filtered, what mediums are used, et cetera. I plan to use a DSLR camera for my shoots and to take them around my house, i.e. my front and back garden, my bedroom, living room, and anywhere else if necessary. Taking it outside would not be a very viable option considering the drastic change in weather, as the wind and rain have picked up monumentally.

 Since I have methods planned out for each artist, but have yet to choose my sixth, I will go with Corita Kent, as I am planning to study her work in my graphic design course. Since I can now create a traditional piece and photograph it like I was hoping to earlier, I will conduct a method. I will likely do this by using paper cutouts of letters and shapes, overlaying them over another piece of paper, colouring them in via the use of my alcohol markers and photographing them. I will take the sets of photos into Photoshop, adjust their values so they all look natural, and cut bits and pieces out and stick them together, applying various layer modes to create pieces in Kent's iconic style. This is likely how I will be doing it in my graphics course, too, so I have more experience and can easily apply my learning to either course.

 My plan to recreate Kent's artwork is to cut out various letters and shapes, with large ones being cut with scissors and small ones being cut with a carving knife. That sheet used to cut them out will then be laid over another sheet, on which I will colour using either markers or paints, likely the latter due to less waste of materials, even if I don't use my markers. It will also take less time, have more texture and be closer to replicating Kent's style, and likely also turn out better in the photos. This is also akin to my work in secondary school photography, where I painted on a sheet of paper and photographed it for use in a series of photos.

 Overall, I feel a lot more confident about this project and I am excited to start it.

Surreal Project Planning

Going into my second year at college, my photography work will become more independent and I will finally have more control and more of a personal touch over my work like I have always dreamt of.

 For my new project, I will be creating mixed media pieces via the use of photographic elements, graphic elements, varied, deep and methodically-approached research, and a range of programs and techniques, i.e. photo-manipulative-friendly programs such as Photoshop and, in some aspects, PaintNET, and more personally graphic design-specialized programs such as the aforementioned PaintNET and FireAlpaca.

 Lots of planning and documentation of progress is recommended for these projects, which I am thankfully already fairly consistent with when it comes to my personal projects. I also find it easy to document and record progress along a project; exhibiting the journey to the lynchpin of a particular project is a skill I am thankful to possess.

 As documented below, I have conducted a mind-map of ideas. Albeit small, there are several routes I can take that are very resourceful and rich. The route I feel most comfortable taking is the mixed media path, with elements of photo-manipulation and other artists' styles to vary my work.

 Dissimilar to my recreations, I will be able to showcase my own personal work fully and freely with optional elements of other artists' styles, which I am happy to take on board. Two artists in particular I may attempt to incorporate into this project are Dela Deso and Tyler Spangler, both of which I studied and researched in my secondary school photography GCSE course.

 I have also been advised to, in tandem with my photo-manipulation and graphic design mixed media planning, look into surrealism. Creating brand new landscapes—essentially camera-less photography, exclusively on Photoshop—out of various other photographs and resources is an avenue I have not previously explored but would vary my work incredibly, and is an idea I will be taking up due to the pragmatic and metaphysical messages and meanings behind it.

 My lecturer has created concise and helpful notes regarding my exploration into surrealist art and how to approach an essay writing about Salvador Dali, a surrealist painter best known for The Persistence of Memory, a painting of several melting pocket watches across a coastline.

 I hope to create a piece reflecting my dreams and nightmares, including visuals of my biggest fears, such as heights and insects, and odd occurrences within my dreams, such as the world flipped upside-down, or walking around purchasing items in a shop, such as sweets or stationery.

 I will use photographs I have taken, as well as reference images which I will photo-manipulate to create something new from them. I may also be able to incorporate other programs into this, such as PaintNET and FireAlpaca, art and graphics programs I have used for some time for personal work, and even some college work showcased here.

 By the end of the creation of my first piece, I hope I will have established the framework of a basic style and will be able to tweak and adjust it as I continue to ease myself into Photoshop and surrealist art in general. I will need to keep my ideas fairly grounded in my own ability, but will also need to step out of my comfort zone to achieve variety.

Final Piece (+ Pinterest Board)

The process for creating my final piece was relatively simple. As I did before with my Goldsworthy recreation, I took a piece of paper and—with my new printer ink—selected twenty-four pieces of my art, ranging from August of last year to April of this year, created a contact sheet, printed it out, cut out each of the pieces and laid them out in a ring on top of a sheet of paper. I then took another sheet of paper and folded it in half to place in the background, acting as two walls and a corner where the floor and two walls meet at the bottom.

 After photographing this, with an orange lamp glow in the background and my phone's camera's flash feature, I imported it into Photoshop, adjusted the exposure, offset, brightness and contrast, then saved it, imported that into FireAlpaca, and created layers on which I drew using colours from a Pantone Solid Coated guide PDF file. I opted for the pink layers to remain lineless and without any median filtering through PaintNET to smooth them out.

 Above is the actual final piece. As for the pit in the middle of the image, I drew a line to distinguish the exposed area of the paper 'floor' below and the white edges of the printed images themselves. I then rounded the corners inside—and one outside—of the lineart, as is my 'signature' with any piece with lineart. The printed images themselves, viewed up closer, have a very strange printing error in which the printer has not properly aligned, so especially with lineart, colours are displaced, making for a 'glitch' effect, which I personally believe enhances the image and its zany vibes.

 I also did not forget about my other Pinterest board! I started this before I began my Gildersleeve recreation but was too caught up amid my inspiration to create to have posted it here. I also felt it would have been redundant to limit it to its own singular post as there would not have been a lot to say about it on its own without the contextual assistance of the other images here. The common colour theme of this board is blue and purple, with the occasional red, yellow or green. I decided to stick to the harmonious purple and pink range, as is also my favoured range of colours in art, when creating both a recreation of Gildersleeve's work and a mini-recreation in a combination of three different artists.

 My wording is not so good; it eventually turns into mindless rambling.

 Finally, here is the sketch I had produced when planning out this final piece. I had originally planned for Gildersleeve's section to be a doorway with its own frame, varying in colours, but had opted for a simpler route, and went for a wall leading outward, appearing as a turn to the left-hand side leading behind the viewer's point of view, and almost up a case of stairs, too. One major mistake I made in producing the final piece was in the Gildersleeve aspect.

 Due to PaintNET not being involved in the creation, I had not created drop shadows underneath each layer. This is also due to the darker shades being drawn on top of filled in lighter shades, meaning there was no sections empty for the darker shades to go underneath. This is mainly due to me having done this at an uninspired and inopportune time, a.k.a in the morning after having overslept and still in pyjamas. Otherwise, I am fairly happy with this final piece and am excited as to whatever my next project will be.