D I G I T A L C O L L A G E
Title: Get Used to You
Medium: Digital Collage Size: 60.96 cm x 91.44 cm Completion: October 8th, 2022 Exhibition Text: A digital collage experimenting with photo-shop and surrealism, taking five separate pictures and layering them on top of each other. I was inspired by three separate artists and their warp technique to add abnormality in my piece. This represents meeting somebody new and anticipating how the outcome will turn out, inspired by meeting my foster dogs for the first time. |
R E F L E C T I V E E S S A Y:
From 2018-2021 I fostered dogs at the Lucky Mutts Humane Society. This process was truly work, in the form of taking care of a separate animal in my house, not knowing what reaction they would have to me, my dogs, or my house. It was always uncertain what their personality would be like until it would finally shine through about two days after arriving. This was a complicated process, but it changed my perspective on understanding. Specifically understanding temperaments, patience, and behaviors and how to really take time for something important. When I first get a new dog, they usually arrive after a 10 hour bus ride. They are scared, smelly, and skinny. After picking them up and driving them to my house, we had to introduce them to my own dogs one at a time, to not overwhelm them.
Most of the time, they wouldn’t warm up to me right away. Sometimes they wouldn’t warm up to me at all. This really taught me how to be patient with these animals. I needed to take the time to simply sit in the same room with them while they figured my house out. If they were abused, they would usually sit in the corner and stare at me. The only thing I could do was look back at them and maintain my space. I was able to use this for the rest of my fostering journey. As much as I would love to bombard them with pets and play, that is not what they want, it’s only what I want. I am incredibly thankful now to have learned to go slow and steady, in which resulted greatly and they lived comfortably until they were adopted.
I also learned how to change my behaviors and how to read other dogs behaviors. Sometimes these dogs would walk in, tail completely between the legs, growling at every person and every dog. When they would show negative signs, I would switch up my body language. That meant my walking, which now I needed to tiptoe. Or how fast I was moving, if I was walking quickly around the house or talking out of silence, it would completely terrify them. I learned to keep calm and quiet when interacting, and to move slowly so I wouldn’t alarm them. I was able to use this in situation in my everyday life, such as a conflict or a problem that needed to be solved. Patience was a big factor in this fostering journey. It was exhausting when nothing I was doing was helping the dog become more comfortable in it’s temporary home. They would not want to be around me, their behavior was still anxious and uptight.
At first I tried spending more time with them, by either trying to play with them, holding them, giving them treats, but they would not budge. However, I was not going to give up. I needed to accept that these dogs have been in the pound for years on end, to the point where they were about to be euthanized unless we took them in. Not to mention the bathroom situation, barely any of these dogs were housebroken- but I won’t mention much of that. It was extremely frustrating, I was thinking “What aren’t they getting? They can’t use my rug as a bathroom mat!”. At that point, I needed to learn that they needed time. They had never spent genuine time with a human before, or if they did it wasn’t for very long. I was able to connect this to my art work, in fact. I would rush my process just to get the piece done, and of course it did not turn out the way I desired. I needed to go slow and take my time with each section to actually create a piece I was proud of. I’m incredibly thankful for these dogs showing me how we need to take time for things we really care about, especially when it comes to relationships, conflicts, and problem-solving.
Most of the time, they wouldn’t warm up to me right away. Sometimes they wouldn’t warm up to me at all. This really taught me how to be patient with these animals. I needed to take the time to simply sit in the same room with them while they figured my house out. If they were abused, they would usually sit in the corner and stare at me. The only thing I could do was look back at them and maintain my space. I was able to use this for the rest of my fostering journey. As much as I would love to bombard them with pets and play, that is not what they want, it’s only what I want. I am incredibly thankful now to have learned to go slow and steady, in which resulted greatly and they lived comfortably until they were adopted.
I also learned how to change my behaviors and how to read other dogs behaviors. Sometimes these dogs would walk in, tail completely between the legs, growling at every person and every dog. When they would show negative signs, I would switch up my body language. That meant my walking, which now I needed to tiptoe. Or how fast I was moving, if I was walking quickly around the house or talking out of silence, it would completely terrify them. I learned to keep calm and quiet when interacting, and to move slowly so I wouldn’t alarm them. I was able to use this in situation in my everyday life, such as a conflict or a problem that needed to be solved. Patience was a big factor in this fostering journey. It was exhausting when nothing I was doing was helping the dog become more comfortable in it’s temporary home. They would not want to be around me, their behavior was still anxious and uptight.
At first I tried spending more time with them, by either trying to play with them, holding them, giving them treats, but they would not budge. However, I was not going to give up. I needed to accept that these dogs have been in the pound for years on end, to the point where they were about to be euthanized unless we took them in. Not to mention the bathroom situation, barely any of these dogs were housebroken- but I won’t mention much of that. It was extremely frustrating, I was thinking “What aren’t they getting? They can’t use my rug as a bathroom mat!”. At that point, I needed to learn that they needed time. They had never spent genuine time with a human before, or if they did it wasn’t for very long. I was able to connect this to my art work, in fact. I would rush my process just to get the piece done, and of course it did not turn out the way I desired. I needed to go slow and take my time with each section to actually create a piece I was proud of. I’m incredibly thankful for these dogs showing me how we need to take time for things we really care about, especially when it comes to relationships, conflicts, and problem-solving.
I N S P I R A T I O N:
S U R R E A L I S M
My main focus of this piece was my dogs and their distorted figure. I was looking for different animals that were used in Surrealism artwork and came across Salvatore Dali's, the Elephants. When I first saw this piece, I thought how interesting the elephants looked with unusually long legs. I was intrigued because it wasn't an average painting of an elephant, however you can still tell what kind of animal it is. This was exactly what I wanted to incorporate into my piece. I wanted to accentuate a body part of each dog, but leave the rest of the body alone, and these legs are pretty eccentric. The second piece I came across was one by the French artist, Julien Tabet. As soon as I saw this, it reminded me of something I would see in a cartoon. I knew I didn't want my piece to have a negative connotation, so when I found Tabet's art, I liked the almost light-hearted edge to it. I took inspiration from the stripes coming off of the zebra's back, however I didn't want to use my dogs colors and shapes on his back, instead I decided to use his nails. The final piece I found was one by Bruno Pontiroli, a quite unusual depiction of a tiger. The way his body curves into a knot-like shape really reminded me of the Surrealist movement, specifically how the body is warped into an exaggerated, stretched out version of a methodical body (similar to the Elephants). I liked how the eyes move around the tiger which I took inspiration from because I wanted the viewer's gaze to first move around the dogs' bodies and eventually end at me.
P L A N N I N G:
My first sketch was an extremely basic idea of what I wanted to portray in my digital piece. I knew beforehand that I wanted my three dogs and myself included in the piece, this sketch was a start for what we should look like. The first thing I focused on was the dogs, I wanted them facing to the left, in the same seated position. Now, I needed to figure out what would be essentially 'wrong' with them. I started experimenting with different line techniques, such as liquid, motion, fabric lines, and melting lines. I was first inspired by Rene Magritte's the Lovers, I wanted to use blank white sheets to cover up the dogs' faces as a way to portray them 'unveiling' their personalities. Unfortunately, this inspiration did not carry through into my next sketch. However, I was intrigued by the line work, so I started adding color to it- which eventually led to my thought process of brown colored lines. My final general sketch was myself, I just wanted to experiment with the position I would end up in, along with the clothes I would be wearing. I figured the most relaxed position would be me sitting down, in very basic clothes- a black long sleeve shirt and blue jeans. I didn't want anything about me to distract the focus on the dogs.
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My final sketch was focused on me and my body language in the collage. I continued with the same black long sleeve shirt and blue jeans, however I wanted to try different hair styles. I tried my hair up and then down, which I ended up liking my hair down the best. I needed to face my left, however none of my pictures were coming out smoothly. So I thought, maybe I should try facing the other way and then invert it when I edit it. After seeing what it looked like inverted, I decided against it because it did not look natural. After choosing the two best pictures that I took facing the left (#1 and #2), I chose one with my hair up and one with my hair down. I decided to keep the same position with my arms and legs too. I wanted to remain reserved and skeptical to show how I'm feeling, because you can't really tell by only my facial expression. There were a few errors in the photos such as my shoe laces being untied or my shoe is cut off, which I would just need to edit those out to make it a little less awkward. My final decision was picture #2, it looks the most natural and casual. |
This next sketch is going into detail on what the dogs will look like. I had changed my mind about them sitting in the exact same position, I felt like it would seem too artificial. I wanted the final image to reflect their personalities in real life, so I started brain-storming what sticks out about them. For Hoot, I decided to take inspiration from Tabet's piece, and use his nails to curl up above his head. This fit the hint of Surrealism I was looking for, and then I started to figure out if I wanted them to curl at the end or just be wavy. In the end, I used both. Sparkles is a jumper, so naturally I took inspiration from Dali's the Elephants and drew her legs stretched out. I wanted her body position to look like she was jumping but her legs are stuck to the ground. Finding something to use for Sunny was a difficult process, he's just fluffy- there was no special characteristic about him. So, I decided to focus on his actual body. I took inspiration from Pontiroli, because the tiger actually reminded me of Sunny. I figured the knot in his body wouldn't be too hard, however later I had realized what I actually got myself into. Taking photos of the actual dogs was a trip and a half. I needed to be extremely precise with the leg angles. Especially with Sparkles, because I needed enough leg to stretch all four but still a full angle of her body.
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P R O C E S S:
I first went around my yard to take some photos against two fences. I needed a solid background color, specifically so the viewer can see Hoot's skinny nails. These two pictures were my final choices, however I went with the picture on the right. The picture on the left had the sun shining behind the fence, which messed with the contrast of the photos I took of the dogs. Since the pictures I took of my dogs have natural lighting shining against their bodies, it would contrast with the shade in the picture on the right. The left picture has a much brighter light shining from the right, which looks much more natural as a background for my photos than the left picture. This is also the place where I get to really meet the foster dogs for the first time and see how they react to a new environment and how they react to other dogs, which is why I thought this spot was fitting for the collage.
The first thing I needed to do after taking Hoot's photo, was to erase the background. I had to use a tiny erasing tool to eliminate the ground and walls so the only thing visible is his body. After erasing the majority of the background, I decided to use the liquefy tool and stretch his real nails out as far as they could go. Then, I used 'color match' to match the color of his nails so I could start drawing the outline of his long nails. Once I was satisfied with the shape of his nail, I colored it in and I did this for every nail until his paw on the left. Once I got to this point, I realized the top of the picture looked a little too crowded with nails, so I experimented with the size and shapes. This is how I ended up with two short nails that curve around his paw. After finalizing all nail details, I erase any leftover imperfections and smooth out the lines.
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Sparkles was a pretty challenging task to complete. First, I needed to erase the background so all I could work with was her body and legs. I tried different methods at first to see which would be easier to satisfy my vision. I started trying to duplicate her legs on top of each other to maintain the same shape and color scheme. However, this looked unnatural, no matter where I erased it was still blotchy. So, I then used the liquefy tool. I would drag my pen down which would stretch the leg little by little. I would need to repeat this motion from the top of her leg to the bottom to keep her general leg shape. This process was pretty complicated, it resulted in many errors. If the motions were too quick and short, the leg would look misshapen and the paws would be extremely tiny. So tiny that it looked like she didn't have any! After a few tries, I realized the liquefy tool was not helping and I needed to try something else. |
I tried one last time to stretch her legs out as evenly as I could, this time not focusing on her paws. At first I thought about using this photo (left) as the final picture, however the fact that her paws weren't visible looked uneven to me. To fix this, I copied and pasted her paws from the original photo onto the current photo. After laying each paw down, I reshaped and erased excess paw and background in order for them to fit the shape of her legs. Then, on the final image (right), I used the liquefy tool to blend her new paw colors into her legs to portray a much more even fur-tone.
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Sunny was the most difficult out of all the dogs I needed to manipulate. I did not know what I was getting myself into when I had this goal in mind. These two photos of Sunny are the first drafts of experimenting with liquefy tool. I was losing faith in warping him to my inspiration, so I started taking my pen and dragging the back of his body counter clockwise. The only problem was, the part of his body I was moving would not blend into his back- the tool didn't work like that. I almost thought about using this photo in the final product, but I was not going to give up.
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First attempt
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Second attempt
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Third attempt
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Fourth attempt
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The first thing I did was copy and paste two photos of Sunny. In the first photo, I took his back (that part closest to the neck) and stretched it up to turn clockwise. In the second photo, I dragged the lower part of his back up counter-clockwise. After matching the height and width of the two separate photos, I started blending in his black and white fur colors. I figured out I needed to do small, quick stokes in order to keep the fur ACTUALLY look like fur, otherwise it looked so clean that it looked fake (even though it is fake, I want it to look as real as possible). After completing the knot, I copy and pasted Sunny's original back onto the new picture. Then I blended in his back colors onto the new picture to complete the final image, and make it look as similar to the inspiration as possible.
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E X P E R I M E N T A T I O N:
During the final copy, I had to shift some things to make it look more realistic (or at least as realistic as it can look despite how they look). I first put all three dogs onto the collage and then myself last. I placed myself on the left side of the collage and fixed the shape to look realistic (like a photograph). Putting the dogs in their position took some extra thought, considering their positions and body size. Since Sparkles is supposed to be looking at me, I needed to match her body up with mine so her face was looking at my face. Sunny is tiny, however also looking up at me- so I needed to place him in a spot that fit the eye level. Hoot was facing forward, so it wasn't hard placing him. The next thing I had to focus on was the shadow, without the shadow, it didn't look natural. I looked up some YouTube videos on how to color in a shadow properly, because with a simple marker tool, it looked very splotchy. It took me a few tries to shade in the perfect shadow shape, because the sun is shining in from the right, so the shadow needs to be on the left. After getting the general shape with a brown colored marker, I used this tool called Gradient Blur. This blur made the shadows look much more realistic. I didn't like how the lines from the copied photos looked so clean. It looked very unnatural and I had to figure out how to make them look slightly "blurry" rather than clean. I took the same brown color and went over every cut line that surrounded mine and the dogs bodies. After blurring these lines, I made another layer and chose a cream color to trace along the right side of our bodies. This made it look much more realistic lighting wise.
C R I T I Q U E:
Similarities:
- The legs. Sparkles' legs have the same stretched out, long shape that resembles Dali's the Elephants. The size is longer and skinnier as it goes down to the ankle while the body remains the original shape. Both also have the same body and leg position, with the view from the side of their bodies. - Body Position. Sunny directly resembles Slinky Tiger by Pontiroli. Both body positions have the same "knot" position, where the head is on the left, the body loops around in the middle, and the back of the body remains on the right. - Nature Background. All three inspiration photos contain a background of nature, similar to my piece which (even though it contains a fence) consists of nature behind and in front of it. It includes the clouds, trees, and a large foreground of grass, similarly to Pontiroli's Slinky Tiger and Zebra Flight by Tabet, whom both use grass, trees, and clouds. |
Differences:
- Line work. The main difference between the inspiration and my piece is where the line work is used. In Zebra Flight, the line work is coming off the zebra's back directing upwards. In my piece, the lines being used are coming off of Hoot's nails. The lines are also different; Nice to Meet you uses curly and wavy lines for Hoot, Zebra Flight contains straight, smooth lines. - Normality. In Nice to Meet You, I express normality versus abnormality through my body remaining untouched versus the dogs' bodies being warped. In the inspirations, there are only warped bodies. There is no other being with a normal body to contrast the "normal" versus "abnormal" body. |
R F E L E C T I O N:
When creating this digital collage, I realized two things: 1. digital art is not my strongest suit and 2. I really enjoy morphing and warping pictures. At first I was hesitant to learn how to Photoshop since I had never used it before. It was pretty complicated to achieve my goal with the ideas I had in mind on a laptop, especially with the little details and lines. After playing around with Procreate, I felt much more comfortable to start my piece because it was hands-on. I was able to control my art-piece with my Apple pencil like a regular pen, which made it much easier. Even thinking of what I wanted the theme to be was a challenge, because most of my positive, life-changing experiences stem from learning from negative ones. I didn't want a negative backstory for this piece, so I tried my hardest to find an experience that was all positive (or at least not as negative as my other ideas). I'll admit I was not as proud of this piece and I was of the other ones, however I was incredibly thankful to be given this opportunity to explore a whole other side of art I had never thought of trying. Photoshop and digital art never crossed my mind when it came to my ideas, so being able to use an entirely different set of tools was challenging- but also exciting. My favorite part was the process of actually warping the dogs' bodies. Using the Liquefy tool was so fun, it was so satisfying to see this photograph become something completely different. That is to say, my least favorite part was also... warping the dogs bodies. It took a lot of trial and error to where I was getting frustrated. Even though it did take time, the outcome perfectly portrayed my vision.
A C T Q U E S T I O N S:
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and it's on your artwork?
My inspirations included stretched out, warped body parts on animals such as stretched legs and long abdomens, which I directly included in my piece specifically on my dogs' bodies.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspirations?
The pieces include abnormal animals that have a comical, light-hearted touch, which was the reason why I wanted to use them for inspiration.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspirations?
Since these are surrealist pieces, there's not much cultural meaning. I mainly focused on the ideas of how much I could change an original picture and make it into an entirely new piece.
What is the central idea and theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme is abnormality, and the natural reaction we have to something or someone that's new to us.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
These surrealist pieces don't hold a lot of meaning behind the picture, however it does focus on the abstract and exaggerated point of view rather than a standard picture.
My inspirations included stretched out, warped body parts on animals such as stretched legs and long abdomens, which I directly included in my piece specifically on my dogs' bodies.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspirations?
The pieces include abnormal animals that have a comical, light-hearted touch, which was the reason why I wanted to use them for inspiration.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspirations?
Since these are surrealist pieces, there's not much cultural meaning. I mainly focused on the ideas of how much I could change an original picture and make it into an entirely new piece.
What is the central idea and theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme is abnormality, and the natural reaction we have to something or someone that's new to us.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
These surrealist pieces don't hold a lot of meaning behind the picture, however it does focus on the abstract and exaggerated point of view rather than a standard picture.
C I T A T I O N S:
"the Elephants" Dali, Salvatore. 1948. https://www.dalipaintings.com/elephants.jsp
"Zebra Flight" Tabet, Julien. 2018. https://webneel.com/daily/1-zebra-flight-photoshop-animal-photo-manipulation-julien-tabet
"Slinky Tiger" Pontiroli, Bruno. 2022. https://talonabraxas.tumblr.com/post/691991035395588096/year-of-the-water-tiger-2022-slinky-tiger-by-bruno
"Zebra Flight" Tabet, Julien. 2018. https://webneel.com/daily/1-zebra-flight-photoshop-animal-photo-manipulation-julien-tabet
"Slinky Tiger" Pontiroli, Bruno. 2022. https://talonabraxas.tumblr.com/post/691991035395588096/year-of-the-water-tiger-2022-slinky-tiger-by-bruno