Title: Searching
Size: 91.44 x 60.96 cm Medium: Digital Collage Date: October 2022 Searching creates a perspective illuminating the importance of inspiration and imagination throughout my life. It acts as an acknowledgment of imagination as a driving force of my artistic career. This piece is inspired by Surrealism and the works of Salvador Dali, highlighting his focus on the mind. The piece is meant to illustrate the concept of being lost in one's imagination and unconsciously searching for inspiration. |
Self-Reflection Essay
- I have long thought about my own personal beliefs and pondered the question “what in my life has impacted my journey?” As I reflect on my own artistic career, I ponder: “what has led me here?” For as long as I can remember, inspiration has led my art-making, the times I remember enjoying creating art the most, were the times I was most inspired.
- When I was young I would always draw pictures of the stories I read and media I consumed. I would imagine myself and those I knew in those stories, doing fantastical and impossible things. This was inspiration, and it drove me to keep creating. As I got older I began writing my own stories, building my own characters. Strangely, focusing more on writing did not lead to me drawing less, it pushed me to draw more. I had an overflow of ideas that I wanted to translate into a visual format, every character and place I imagined. I wanted others to understand what I was seeing. The few times in my life I can remember not drawing, it was always due to lack of inspiration, not lack of wanting to do it. This inspiration, this desire to create something, to reflect on the things I appreciated, drove me to continue making art.
- As I got older I became drawn to new forms of media, new outlets to express my creativity. I discovered video games and was captured by the new possibilities and ideas they prompted in me. When I wasn't drawing or writing I was building things on games like Minecraft, I would spend hours constructing castles and cities, I felt uniquely free to explore whatever ideas I had. This virtual platform for creating is what led me to begin doing digital art. None of this was intentional, of course, I was simply led by my desire to create.
- Unconsciously, I was placing the building blocks for my future interests and passions. I believe that this unconscious inspiration and need for creative output has been the driving force in my artistic career. I also believe that most in my position have likely had similar experiences, it is important to let your interests inspire you. I believe my art should be fun and expressive. I want to care about what I'm making, not just have it look pretty. I want my imagination to be free and endlessly creative. I never want to do anything I hardly care about, sometimes I have to, but it doesn't stop me from seeking to pursue my interests when I’m able.
- Since then I've gotten older, I now have more responsibilities, and problems to worry about. However, I still delight in simply having fun with creation, I still attempt to make art for myself, not just to please other people. My greatest critic is myself, but my criticism wanes when I find myself enjoying what I’m doing. I still search for that inspiration wherever I go. The world isn't so mysterious and curious as it once was, but often, I am still drawn in by something amazing and new.
Inspiration
The artist this piece was inspired by is Salvador Dali and his works in the Surrealism movement. Dali was known for his exploration of the subconscious and unconscious mind. Two Pieces in particular that acted as inspiration for this piece are Dali's The Persistence of Memory (1931) and The Burning Giraffe (1937). Both of these are imaginative scenes, settings that could never exist in reality. However they are still reflections of reality. According to MoMA, The Persistence of Memory comes from Dali's memories of the coastlines in his birthplace of Catalonia, Spain while the burning giraffe is said to be a commentary on the conflict in Spain at the time.
Salvador Dali Salvador Dali was a surrealist artist and filmmaker born in Figueras, Spain in 1904. He was a pioneer of the Surrealist movement and focused on memory, dreams, and the unconscious. He worked in many mediums including painting and sculpture, though his introduction to the art world was through his filming. Dali's work is characterized by its often barren backgrounds and strange symbolism. He worked with many inspirations throughout his career including Renaissance influences like Rafael, as well as his political anti-fascist views. His political views would get him expelled from the surrealists and he would go into exile in the united states. In the US he was known for his enigmatic and flamboyant personality and self-promotional stunts. In his late career he would design sets for plays as well as some interior design and jewelry making.
Planning When I began to think of what I sought to achieve with this project, I decided I wanted to create something different than my usual work. My initial idea was to focus on inspiration and imagination, and I began focusing on the way certain media affects these concepts. I ended up dropping the media portion and instead focusing on the idea of inspiration itself. I decided to focus on surrealism and the unconscious mind, as that fit my initial ideas of inspiration and imagination. I was initially unsure which artist I would base my work on, but after observing some surrealist works I finally decided on Salvador Dali. I then began the process of formulating my composition. I really wanted to place emphasis on the idea that this scene was occurring within someone's mind. I decided I would position an image of myself front and center within an otherworldly environment, I also wanted to create some sort of brain-like image on my head. I made a few planning sketches to try to refine my ideas and thought about how I would create my background. I had recently photographed some sunflower fields and wanted to incorporate them into my piece.
Process My first step in the creation process was gathering and taking the photos I would use for my collage. Some elements I already had pictures of, but other elements such as myself required new photographs to be taken. When taking pictures I needed to make sure that they were PNG files so that I would be able to open them in most photo editing applications. I also needed to ensure that my photos were high resolution, especially the photos that would make up the foreground of the piece, because I would be scaling the images up to fit a 24 x 36 inch format. Although I could easily adjust the lighting on my photos, I tried to get good lighting when I took them which would save me from having to manipulate the lighting further down the line. I tried to take a variety of shots so that I would be able to pick and choose the best option.
. When beginning to actually create my piece I first opened the picture of myself on Photopea. Photopea is essentially a free web-based Photoshop alternative that I chose to use for this project due to its availability on school Chromebooks. It is impossible to get Photoshop on a Chromebook as it is a software and the school Chromebooks are unable to download it. Once I had chosen my image and opened it in Photopea, I utilized the eraser and magic wand tools to remove the background and cut the image of myself out. Due to the size that we were printing these pieces, I needed to ensure that my settings would provide a quality, high resolution print. My initial image was fitted to a 24 x 36 inch project with 170 pixels per inch.
I then uploaded a picture of sunflower fields that I took on my phone, I created it as a new layer. Then I rasterized the new layer and selected the sky with the magic wand tool, deleting it. I decided I would use a third image for the sky of the background. Dali's backgrounds all have a clear horizon line and sky, I wanted to replicate this in my piece. The image I used for the sky was an image of bamboo I took in march 2022. I cropped the picture to fit the area I wanted and then lowered the opacity of the layer so that I could slightly see through it. I then took the background layer, automatically created when creating a new project in Photopea, and used the gradient tool to make a multicolored gradient. This gave the bamboo a nice rainbow effect and was meant to give further clues that this was not reality. The second to last layer I made was above the backgrounds but below the picture of myself. I utilized a picture I took of the temple of Saturn in Rome in spring 2022. I decided to add this during the making of this piece as I already had the picture and thought that the contrast between a sunflower field and the temple would provide a fractured landscape filled with varied and partial ideas that might invoke the feeling of searching for inspiration. I removed the background using the magic wand tool and then used the eraser to erase the bottom of the pillars allowing some sunflowers overlap the base, creating a very natural and realistic transition. My final layer was the brain. I simply created an empty layer through the layer tab. I then drew a brain shaped outline using the brush tool over my head. I used the paint bucket tool to fill the outline and then cleaned up the edges with the brush tool. Finally, I greatly lowered the layers opacity and was ready to upload it. |
(above) The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dali
(above) The Burning Giraffe (1937) by Salvador Dali
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Critique
This section is a reflection on some similarities and differences between my piece and Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory (1931) and The Burning Giraffe (1937). One similarity is the pieces symbolism, both my piece and Dali's are largely symbolic works not meant to simply be visually pleasing. Another similarity are the pieces strong use of foreground and background with a clear separation between the ground and the sky past the horizon line. The pieces also make use of varied colors that generally set the tone of the work, The Burning Giraffe utilizes dull colors to express the dark themes of struggle and conflict while mine utilizes light varied colors to show the expansiveness of imagination and the varied possibilities of inspiration.
Some differences of the pieces are their topics, all of the pieces have differing and unique topics and focuses, my piece is about searching for inspiration while Dali's include memory and conflict. Another difference is the medium, both of Dali's pieces are paintings while mine is a digital collage of photographs. My piece also features me in it, while it is not exactly a self-portrait it does differ from Dali's imaginative subjects.
Some differences of the pieces are their topics, all of the pieces have differing and unique topics and focuses, my piece is about searching for inspiration while Dali's include memory and conflict. Another difference is the medium, both of Dali's pieces are paintings while mine is a digital collage of photographs. My piece also features me in it, while it is not exactly a self-portrait it does differ from Dali's imaginative subjects.
Experimentation
My experimentation for this piece mostly consisted of testing the different tools and experimenting to see what would be useful to me or not. I mainly just tested the tools on my picture. I have used photo editing software before so I was familiar with some of the tools already, although some of their qualities were unique to Photopea. The tools I found most useful were the magic wand, eraser, paintbrush, paint bucket, layers, and gradient. I also experiment with things like blur and smudge although i did not find a use for these. I initially had a lot of trouble with the magic wand which became one of my most useful tools, I was confused with the
Reflection
While I have used photo editing software before, I am quite unfamiliar with Photopea specifically. It is quite similar to other photo editors i have used in the past, however, it is just different enough that it is quite confusing to use. I would often go searching for tools in the places they were located in Photoshop or Pixlr which would lead to great confusion when they were no where to be found. Some tools and features are under different tabs or have different names, while some simply don't exist at all. Ultimately, I believe it was good for me to broaden my scope of photo editors as Photopea is really quite helpful for people who don't have a budget to spend on Photoshop. My favorite part of this project was the ability for me to showcase and use some old pictures that I thought I would never use, it was really great to actually have a use for these pictures besides just to remember the moments they captured.