Project 5 - Process

I struggled with the start of this project. I decided to work on a self portrait. In the past years I've had to redetermine, 'who am I' in various roles in my life. Roles that have influenced this include, but aren't limited to: daughter, sister, artist, aunt, student, employee, victim, graphic designer, survivor, wife, patient, caregiver, ex-wife, girlfriend, and so on. Do the roles define me or who am I beyond these? I will try to answer these with a self portrait. I really debated if I wanted to keep on the eye glasses or not.


Starting with a self portrait image that I removed some unappealing elements that aren't there everyday just recently. Therefore I don't believe these really define me. I corrected the color also and masked the background out. (I also found it useful to listen to music that I haven't listened to in a long time. This kind of gives a feeling of who I was or how I felt at the time I originally listened to them as new songs.)

Accented the edges 4, 9, 4 and turned black and white. To symbolize my pencil drawing background. I retained another version to work with. i might break sections and show 'layers' of personality.

The next filter I added was sprayed strokes stroke length 12 and spray radius 7. It seemed to give the image a bit of inked depth.

I used a butterfly with crosshatching filter and used a color dodge filter on the layer.

I also shattered the face and brought the underlying edited, color face back.

 

(re-adding this apparently it was lost)

In the image I restored the color for the underlying face. I used another face layer at 48% opacity and using Color Dodge on the layer to brighten it. I added a drop shadow for the 'shattered face' to create depth.  I also turned the eyes blue on the outer one. It's symbolic of the color I associate with and also an aspect that almost all my family has but I lack. A sense of being an outsider.

I found a file of flames but I didn't like the intensity of the red on the background. I changed this to blue after applying a  Charcoal filter to give it some texture. I also used a mask to milk back some of the light and texture from the background.

I printed a few test runs and noted the original drop shadow was too subtle - I made it thicker for the final piece.

I feel I captured some of the idea of reinventing yourself over time. It's not necessarily the younger appearing self underneath. It would have been intriguing to use an older person to break down into a younger individual.

Project 5 Concepts

Considering creating a digital painting using my tablet of my nieces with their pawpaw from photos. The youngest was born on the day he passed one year to the day so incorporating her into the image with him and her sister will be challenging.

I've also thought of taking- as a separate idea- a sketch that I created and developing it further into Photoshop.

https://the-dragonsnail.deviantart.com/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaQKur9FCwi/?taken-by=kjdickinson78

Project 4 Critique

One piece second will be the other side of bipolar disorder. 

It will be a green landscape and yellow to imply anxiety.

Project 4:Statement & Process

I would like to show the depths of anxiety. The unnerving sensations and an all-at-once type of feel that comes with that disorder. Anxiety is a terrible burden and mental illness is generally misunderstood and poorly received. I'd like to break through that barrier with an image that can give a sensation that is relatable.


Filter that created an edgy effect for the depressive side possibly of mental illness in general or darker side of anxiety, A depressed 'broken' feeling caused by the disorder.  I want to explore color for the individual shots. The concept I am also exploring is perhaps moving toward a hand illustrated appearance or actually some hand illustration scanned in.
Using the filter: Accented Edges
Edge Width 2
EB: 7
Smoothing: 2

This is my current progress I plan to work more on it from home, I may go with more of a general mental illness or a ‘void sensation’ showing loneliness, depression, isolation etc

 Found an icy background and stamped in the ground

 Copied and flipped the far left side

 Had a gap so I placed a tree in from the other side, trimmed it, edged it, 

tried to create some uniqueness to it

Found a gap and filled it with another tree

Added a blue hue through colorize-> hue/saturation and levels, 

adjusted foreground character to match.

I moved the figure to the left 1/3 of the image and found a set of icicles I liked to work with.
I think I might try to build a pattern/brush from them. I edited them to remove the blue wall which matched my current background conveniently, since some of that color will bleed through the ice. I also restored tips to some of the larger icicles that had lost them.

Started by removing skin imperfections before filter, because this was an issue that had to be dealt with after in previous image. Next reconstructing hand restoring missing top of head.

Remove background and select a couple of images to build my green landscape from.

I used a minimum of 4-5 green scenes to build a background and tinted the figure. The scenes included roads, trees to the left and right and a general background area. I also ghosted the area where the paths led off to. The figure I toned green also.