Composite Image Critique

Ice Age Premonition

     George Grie was born May 14, 1962 and is a Russian-Canadian artist known for his outstanding digital surrealism artwork. George is known for his numerous amounts of 2D and 3D images as well as matte painting artwork. His detailed digital art captures dreamlike worlds, which he calls neosurrealism. This form of surrealism is a combination of dreams and fantasies he brings to life through composite images.

    I think he composed this image by taking several images of clouds and water to create the background, used pictures of buildings and icebergs to create the basis of the foreground focal point, and then added little details like the stair case, cavern, and birds. These little details, in conjunction with how he changed the tones of the multiple images so the overall effect is very monochromatic, is what I think really makes the image so outstanding. His choice of of these dark blue and grey tones in his images bring a cold and mysterious feeling to the viewer. You could stare at a picture of an ice cube all day long and not have any chills but George's image makes an impact on his viewers through these somber, unworldly composite images. For those reasons I think his result is very pleasing.
  

Digital Painting

Mechanism

      In my first digital abstract painting named "Mechanism" I used a monochromatic color scheme of shades of green to add dimension and create a 3D futuristic look. The image combines harmony in the monochromatic greens with a sharp contrast of dark and light shades and soft and hard shapes. The greens are used to ignite excitement in the viewers as hope of the future holds unforeseen promises.

 I used a range of digital painting techniques such as designing the shapes to create the focal point which is incorporated into the rule of thirds by being off to the left of the image as well as using gradients and various brushes to create the painting. The concept of this image was to create a modern, cutting edge piece so the focal point can be taken literally as "cutting edge" since the shapes that create it are extremely sharp. The focal point draws your attention to the left side of the image and the gradient guides the viewer's eyes straight to the shape.

Eye of the Beholder

     In this digital painting named "Eye of the Beholder" I took inspiration from the image to the left which I found on a digital painting website. Instead of over painting an eye I started from scratch and painted the entire eye using a wide variety of brushes and tones of colour, especially in the skin. The image captures intermediate colors of blue-violet and tones of yellow-orange which are soft variations of complimentary colours. The focal point is the detailed iris and pupil of the eye which pull the viewers attention to the middle of the image. I had originally finished with the image on the right but decided to alter and deepen the colors to make a bigger impact upon first glance and overall make                                                                              the digital painting look more realistic. 

     I decided on changing the color of the eye to a deep blue because it represents feelings of disappointment and grief which eyes can reveal so well through emotion. People say an image is worth a thousand words, and I believe the emotion an eye holds is worth just the same. This digital painting was definitely the most time consuming and difficult out of the 3 I completed but I'm very pleased with the result.

Depth of Mind

       I chose to do another abstract image for my final digital painting entitled "Depth of Mind", which uses a range of monochromatic and analogous colours that blend together harmoniously. The choice of deep purples and blues represent the deeper, distraught side of the mind and spirit that fades to the focal point of the brighter light tones of blue which represent the relaxation of the mind. The focal point is the representation of this calm state because its the relief of stress which surrounds our lives in the deep blue colours. I considered the rule of thirds by having the focal point slightly off centre and on a diagonal to signify that the journey to peace of mind is askew and not always perfect. The orbs of color reinforce this symbolization through pieces which are faded, that represents parts of our life which shouldn't be focused on or be worried about, and pieces which are clear and in focus, that represent the important things in life that leave us content and should be focused on.  

50 Shade of Carefree

     I ended up doing another version of  "Depth of Mind" entitled "50 Shades of Carefree" which follows along with the symbolism of states of mind. I chose this title because the rainbow of bright colours represents a child like cheerfulness and incorporates more in focus orbs which signify a mind free of worries. 

Note - the posting is giving me difficulties and that is why I wasn't able to have my write up posted on time. The text editing also won't let me disable highlighting which is very frustrating so I apologize for any troubles you may having reading my write up.

Our Lady Of Lourdes Poetry Anthology Cover Design

     My cover design should be selected for the Lourdes Poetry Anthology because it represents the ideas of our students put into thoughts, expression, and poetry. The lightbulb represents the creative minds that Lourdes puts on showcase through the book. The black and white adds drama and mystery while the font ties in old handwriting in a digitally fabricated image.

Original

I also added grain to the picture to give the image more depth and texture and made the font of each set of words a slightly different size to make a larger impact. Overall I think my design cover should be picked because the combination of simpicity and represents the ideas of creative students at Lourdes

Guelph Multicultural Festival Poster

     For this assignment, my concept idea was to have a unique outstanding poster that really grabbed the readers attention with a bold font and a interesting centre point.
    I decided to have a girl kicking a soccer ball as that centre point because as May approaches, the weather gets warmer and soccer is a past time many Canadians love. Since the multicultural festival is in May I thought this worked out well and would grab the attention of sports fans and stand out from the other multicultural posters. I put the skyline of buildings including the CN Tower and Parliament building because it represents our bustling cities of Canada full of people and places to see.
     The background is a twist on the Canadian flag, pulling the foreground splashes of white in with the faded texture in red and black. Not only does this pull the image together, but it also really adds that pop of colour to make my poster stand out.
    Lastly, the group of Lourdes students and staff standing together represents the cooperation and unity  of our community and Canada as a whole, appreciating multiculturalism. I put these people in black and white because even though every individual is unique, we are all equal. If we all saw in black and white our world would be free of racism. We are lucky enough to have a country so diverse to appreciate the many cultures of the world and I think these smiling faces show just that.

Group Art Installation Rubric

       For this project, my group included Jamie, Emily, Carter, Daniel, and myself. After looking at the slideshow Mrs. Reidel showed us, we decided we wanted to do origami for our mobile because we thought it was relatively easy to learn how to make and the butterflies would flow well for the desired effect of a mobile.

       As a team we discussed our colour theme, balance and focal point. We decided we wanted our butterflies to be separated by warm and cool colours and have two larger origami butterflies in the middle as our focal point. Since we had warm and cool colours separated into two groups, we chose one of the large butterflies to be red and the other to be blue to co-inside with the colour scheme.

       Personally when I think of mobiles, I think of the ones that hang above babies cribs, so I suggested to the group we balanced our butterflies on something circular to replicate the look. We were provided a hola hoop to hang the origami and hung them at different levels to give the affect that they were flying, as apposed to strings of butterflies hanging straight.
   
       One aspect of the project my group was especially pleased with was the movement of our piece. Every butterfly hanging swayed ever so slightly and we thought we really captured the purpose of our project because of this.

       A couple of challenges we faced while creating our mobile were teaching everyone how to create the origami in the first place, and making sure everyone in our group was working towards finishing the project by completing an assigned task. It took a lot of communication and patience to get every group member to be as productive as possible to finish on time.

       In the end, my group was really pleased with the outcome of our project and felt accomplished after all the hard work we had put into it had paid off!