Autumn Flight

This was a piece I had started in my Design I class when we were taking time to play around with art apps to get a feel of drawing on the Ipad. After doing most of this on the ipad, I did some touching up and refining in PaintTool Sai. I decided to post it here for my Digital Art class, since it's completely digital!

Autumn Flight, done on the Inksy Application on the Ipad, then later edited in PaintTool Sai.

Bonus:

So with this digital drawing I’m going to take a quick moment to promote bats, because they typically have such a bad rap! Here are some interesting tidbits on these little guys:

•  Bat's are the only mammal truly capable of flight.
  
• Fewer than 10 people in the last 50 years have contracted rabies from North American bats. You are more likely to catch Malaria from mosquito.They bite only in self-defense and pose little threat to people who do not handle them.
• On that note, one bat can eat up to 1000-2500 pesky mosquito's in an hour.
•  Many plants rely on bats for pollination and seed dispersal.
• Bats are often seen as gross or vile, but they are in fact highly clean animals. They are known to groom themselves almost constantly when not eating or sleeping—making them like tiny flying cats!
• Bat droppings in caves support whole ecosystems of unique organisms, including bacteria useful in detoxifying wastes, improving detergents, and producing gasohol and antibiotics.

Please never harm a bat, they are protected under federal law and it is illegal to kill bats. Knowing this, they are very vulnerable to extinction, as they only give birth to one pup per year—and they’re already becoming endangered thanks to white nose syndrome which can wipe out a total colony of bats. These little guys can have a life span of up to 40 years, being one of the world’s longest-lived mammals for its small size. Let’s not cut that short!

Besides, look how cute they are!?

Hopefully, if even a little bit, I've changed some bad perceptions of these guys.

Amazing Bat Facts." Bat Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.

Bat out of Hell

This was a photo manipulation done in Photoshop! This piece wasn't really going for realism, but perhaps more of a graphic novel type feel. We were required to feature ourselves inside this piece, so of course I featured myself with bats! After finding a scenic photo of a volcano, I looked up several photos of bat colonies which I knew I wanted to have coming from the mouth of the volcano, billowing out similar to how smoke would. The bats in the foreground had their contrast set up higher which made them look more volcanic, perfect for creatures that live in the depths of a volcano. While my figure with my arms stretched out, appears to be “summoning” them. The title Bat out of Hell seemed perfect for this piece.

                This is an asymmetrical piece which focal point lies on the mouth of the volcano, due to the bright orange color amongst the more de-saturated colors. It has aerial sense of space and proportion as the bats grow larger and become more refined the closer they come from the background to the foreground. In turn, this created movement, as your eyes can follow the bats from where they erupt, to where they ‘fly’ toward the summoning figure. The grainy texture of the background takes away from any realism but I think added to the overall feel of the piece.

                I like this piece alright, though with more time I think I could improve on it!

Bat out of Hell, photos used and manipulated in Photoshop.

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!

Assassin

     This was my Dada-like piece that we made during class! No real meaning, I just made it while playing around. We started out by taking photos of ourselves using our Ipads, and then brought them into photoshop for editing. I will say the cartoon-ish outline around the face was inspired by the grungy look in the video game Borderlands! Actually, the shirt I was wearing at the time, which said "Assassin" is a type of character class you could play in the game, hence where the wording came from. My friend said it looks like some kind of strange subliminal propaganda poster.

     While there is some symmetry in the background of this piece, due to the foreground layout I think it would still be considered asymmetrical. There is a use of both geometric and organic shapes within this piece; the rectangular cut-outs of the face were actually inspired by the artist Pablo Picasso. I believe the focal point is where the wording ‘Assassin’ is due to its bright contrast and the fact it does not reoccur on any other part of the piece which seems to emphasize it. Also because of the more vertical shapes including the drip pattern, I believe it draws your eyes to scan the image up and down. It has repetition as the cut-outs and mirrored pictures are from the same photo, only they have been slightly altered or cut out from different areas before being placed onto the piece.

     Again, this is another fairly simple piece but I like it as it is.

Assassin, photos taken with an Ipad and edited in Photoshop.

Da·da

ˈdädä/

noun

noun: Dada

1. an early-20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd.

The Black Death

In class, we did organic paintings using acrylic and water on board. After looking over the image for for a story in the shapes, I was able to make out a hooded figure.

Original Painting:

  

 The Black Death, Picture taken with Ipad, done with Acrylic on Board.

Edited in PaintTool Sai:

The Black Death, done with Acrylic on Board, Picture taken with Ipad, edited in PaintTool Sai.

Alternate Lighter Version:

The Black Death, done with Acrylic on Board, Picture taken with Ipad, edited in PaintTool Sai.

"During the 14^th century, one of the largest epidemics known as the Black Death clouded Europe, killing over 25 million people in less than 5 years. Plague doctors wore special costumes, often seen in heavy black robes and a mask shaped similar to that of a beak: used to hold scented substances to block out the “bad air”. They took care of plague victims before death, and often were witnesses to numerous wills."

   

                To create this piece, I basically just dripped or flung the black and orange acrylic on the colored board in random places, before adding droplets of water. After that, I lifted the board at an angle and tilted it in different ways to let the water run the paint in different directions. Once the water ran dry and no longer manipulated the paint, I decided the initial organic painting was finished.

    Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus such as an image or sound that a person has perceived as significant. As an example, making out animals or faces in the clouds, or hearing words in static noise.  (A famous example would be the woman who saw Jesus in her cheese toast!) Without a doubt artists and creative people alike love to pull scenes and images from seemingly random patterns, whether this be something from nature or on something man-made. This is exactly what happened with my Organic painting, and upon scanning it I was able to vaguely make out the shapes of a figure.   I then decided bring out this figure through Digital Art, as not to mess with the original piece.

                After taking a photo and bringing it into Photoshop, I decided to make the figure ‘pop’ by using line to outline the defining shapes and adding a slightly darker overlay within it to distinguish the figure. However, I still wanted to keep aspects of the original painting, so I didn’t add an incredible amount of detail into the piece to allow it to stay at least a little vague.

                I think the colors add a dreary atmosphere to the piece, the blending of orange and black making this polluted, apocalyptic feel.  The black blotchy cloud looming over and even sticking to the figure, represents the black plague. The center figure itself symbolizes two things: a plague doctor and the angel of death, with its gnarled wings, hooded cloak and a beaked skull-like face, similarly to the beaked masks plague doctors would wear. You could say seeing a plague doctor was practically the same thing as seeing the angel of death, as the mortality rate of the Black Death was 30—75%.

                While this piece is asymmetrical, I think there is a sense of movement, as the cloud seems to flow down and materialize this creepy figure floating in the center space. I believe the focal point would be the bird-like skull, as it has a bright contrast to the rest of the darker piece.

                Overall I like this piece even if the process was simple, if for anything it’s potential deeper meaning.