First Snow.

This was mostly just me playing with the adjustments and filters in Photoshop! This is my dog Sebastian when he was a puppy, experiencing his first snow which is a rare occurrence in our part of Texas.

First Snow, photograph edited in Photoshop.

First Snow Graphite, photograph edited in Photoshop.

Coffee and Snow, photograph edited in Photoshop.

Bright Eyes, photograph edited in Photoshop.

 

First Snow Grunge, photograph edited in Photoshop.

Woven Together, photograph edited in Photoshop. 

For this piece I retrieved an older photo of my dog from Photobucket, before taking it into Photoshop to play with. After making several different adjustments and filters of the same photo, I saved each one to ultimately use on a separate, singular piece. After laying down the original photo as a base, I began to cut out vertical and horizontal rectangles from each of the edited pieces, before aligning them on top of the original base. All of the layers besides the base had its opacity lowered for a softer effect, while the ‘top’ rectangular strips were given a dropped shadow, giving them the illusion that they were overlapping the other strips.  In fact, the title, Woven Together was named as the over lapping plaid-like pattern made the image appear to be woven together to make a singular image.

I think the focal point lies within the center circular shape, where your eyes are automatically drawn to the left-hand eye on the photo due to its more sharp lines and bright contrast. While this piece is asymmetrical, it has a sense of unity due to the shapes coming together and meeting at the circular opening, which brings focus to my dogs face. With that it has a variety of textures due to the different filters and adjustments making the fur appear to have a different feel. For example, one patch might look soft and cottony while the other looks more rough and grainy. Because of the reoccurring use of horizontal and geometric shapes it has in a semi-organized way, I think it has a sense of repetition. It also has a use of harmonic gray-tones, which I like as it makes me think of snow.

While I initially thought this piece might be a little jumbled, no one else seemed to think so and the piece is still recognizable as a dog, so that’s good!