Digital Collages

Forgotten posts...

Whilst typing up the notes from the crit I realised I hadn't actually posted the work I was presenting. I have been digitally manipulating photos relating to street photography, layering them with my paintings on acrylic. Some of them seemed to 'work', or 'do something' for me, with others not so much.

     

Bringing in photography

Street Photography and it's place in the world

Another type of art that came to mind when reading the introduction to 'How to See the World' was street photography, and the importance of it to modern day memories, as well as it's place within social media. Whilst reading I was reminded of an exhibition I saw in August by famous street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. 

A photo posted by Rosie (@rsprcy) on Aug 5, 2016 at 8:22am PDT

...but that was ages ago...from this I was inspired to begin to take my camera out, taking photos of mundane situations and surfaces that I found interesting. This links to my current practise through my use of texture and exploring space. I am thinking about using photoshop to combine both my physical paintings with photography to create a photoessay- linking it to the subject/object grid given to us.

Portraiture

You can tell a lot about someone by their face. 

Facial expressions and shapes within the face help to build a strong narrative, adding to the connection between a work and the viewer. Sometimes this link is explicit, for example in a piece of art showing clear emotion, but what about when the face is distorted or overlapped?

One of the things I took from the Aspect Lecture on space was the importance of the viewer having to work to understand what is exactly going on, letting them form their own ideas and opinions surrounding the work.

To help me with my technical drawing skills I asked people I knew to send me photos of their face- which I then drew and developed using different materials. 

Hannah, Acrylic Paint

Ellie, Fine Liner

Jay, Charcoal Pencil

Leah, 2B Pencil

Poppy, Charcoal

I then used Photoshop Elements to overlap and manipulate the images digitally. These were the results-

A practise attempt at making a digital collage of faces

A second attempt at the collage

Final attempt at overlaying drawings of people- changing the
opacity allowed me to create a better 'flow' of the collage