Reverse Progression
36 x 24 in, 170 resolution Digital Manipulation November 2021 The intention of this self reflective digital collage was focused on advancing my limited digital artistic skills. Specifically, this project's goal was to allow me to reflect on a deep personal level. By using inspiration from both Danish Fernandes and Micaela Lattanzio, two artist known for their emotionally expressive digital art, I was able to produce my own digital self reflection that demonstrated who I am. |
SELF REFLECTIVE ESSAY
This digital collage is a self reflection of my growth. My development. The process of going from a child to my current teen age. I titled this piece “Reverse Progression” because the way that I see it, as you grow up, getting older and experiencing more, you should be developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced or better state of yourself. Personally, I believe that there were many factors in my childhood that stunted my growth mentally and emotionally. Based on what I experienced with my family, my friends, my teachers, the strangers around me. I struggled to grow up the normal or correct way. Ever since I was a child I feel as if each step, action, experience, takes away a piece of me, breaking me apart instead of everything moving me forward, building on me, advancing me. I cannot lie. There were many parts of my childhood that were very enjoyable. Aspects of my life that were magnets to the broken off pieces of me, pulling them back and putting me together again. These parts of my life I love. These parts of my life I miss. I appreciate. These parts of my life still happen too. I notice every now and then how memories or events that happen in my life are very black and white. Not in the sense that I don't see the colorful occurrences in my life that are associated with my emotions and well being. Instead, I mean that these events are black and white in the sense that they either put me back together or break me apart. There is no in between. There is no neither. What I want more than anything is a grey area. I see the grey area to be neither breaking me apart or putting me back together, but instead progressing me. I want to grow up out of this black and white routine. I don't want to just be fixed from the breakaways, I want to be added to. I want to be advanced. By looking back at myself as a child, the most I can do is wish I would not have dwelled on the break offs. I wish that I would have instead focused on the magnets that pull those pieces back to me. Instead, I tried achieving the grey area and dwelling on the break offs. I look back on my child self and see how I started training myself to do this. I learned to enjoy the magnetic parts of my life. The good parts. The happy or enjoyable parts. This is how I came across the idea for my digital collage. I wanted to be able to produce a digital collage that self reflected who I am. Who I am is defined by who I've always been or who I was even when I was little or young. I look back at myself when I was three. I look back at myself enjoying simple things like swinging in the air. I look back upset with the child, envious of the obliviousness to the world. Now I feel as if I am surrounded by the sadness that has overtook my life. i am faded from the pieces that have broken away from me. Faded, knowing that I've been breaking away for years.
This digital collage is a self reflection of my growth. My development. The process of going from a child to my current teen age. I titled this piece “Reverse Progression” because the way that I see it, as you grow up, getting older and experiencing more, you should be developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced or better state of yourself. Personally, I believe that there were many factors in my childhood that stunted my growth mentally and emotionally. Based on what I experienced with my family, my friends, my teachers, the strangers around me. I struggled to grow up the normal or correct way. Ever since I was a child I feel as if each step, action, experience, takes away a piece of me, breaking me apart instead of everything moving me forward, building on me, advancing me. I cannot lie. There were many parts of my childhood that were very enjoyable. Aspects of my life that were magnets to the broken off pieces of me, pulling them back and putting me together again. These parts of my life I love. These parts of my life I miss. I appreciate. These parts of my life still happen too. I notice every now and then how memories or events that happen in my life are very black and white. Not in the sense that I don't see the colorful occurrences in my life that are associated with my emotions and well being. Instead, I mean that these events are black and white in the sense that they either put me back together or break me apart. There is no in between. There is no neither. What I want more than anything is a grey area. I see the grey area to be neither breaking me apart or putting me back together, but instead progressing me. I want to grow up out of this black and white routine. I don't want to just be fixed from the breakaways, I want to be added to. I want to be advanced. By looking back at myself as a child, the most I can do is wish I would not have dwelled on the break offs. I wish that I would have instead focused on the magnets that pull those pieces back to me. Instead, I tried achieving the grey area and dwelling on the break offs. I look back on my child self and see how I started training myself to do this. I learned to enjoy the magnetic parts of my life. The good parts. The happy or enjoyable parts. This is how I came across the idea for my digital collage. I wanted to be able to produce a digital collage that self reflected who I am. Who I am is defined by who I've always been or who I was even when I was little or young. I look back at myself when I was three. I look back at myself enjoying simple things like swinging in the air. I look back upset with the child, envious of the obliviousness to the world. Now I feel as if I am surrounded by the sadness that has overtook my life. i am faded from the pieces that have broken away from me. Faded, knowing that I've been breaking away for years.
INSPIRATION
To begin this project, I knew what the broad goal and criteria were that I needed to meet. I needed to find inspiration to help me format my own ideas to meet the intended goal and criteria. To do so, I began looking for digital artists who could inspire me with an emotional or simply expressive piece. I came across Micaela Lattanzio’s Fragmenta, A Journey beyond the body collection. This series explores themes such as gender equality, the empowerment of women, identity issues, and more. Personally for this specific project, I focused mainly on the identity issues theme throughout her collection. This artist uses the artwork in this series as a reflection of understanding the world. I found it very interesting how Lattanzio broke apart the bodies in her artwork. I observed this fragmentation to represent a feeling of losing one’s self. The feeling when you can sense yourself drifting off or breaking away; losing a sense of self or reality. I almost understood this feeling as I viewed her series and wanted to use this expression in my own self reflection. Using this specific feeling of identity issues and the lack of a sense of self to demonstrate the process of losing yourself as you grow up, as you get older and more mature. |
Along with Micaela Lattanzio, Danish Fernandes productively demonstrates a deep and relatable sense of emotion in his artwork. Instead of through metaphors, such as Lattanzio uses in her work, Fernandes uses striking color in his emotive pieces. He uses popping color to surround the main focus of an expressive character. In most of his pieces, the focal point is a character used to demonstrate the theme or emotion created in the piece. The specific artwork I mainly used as my inspiration, shows a very expressive man showing his anger, distress, or a similar emotion with harsh lines jutting out from behind him. The other piece used as a main inspiration, also created by Fernandes, was of the girl blowing a bubble of gum, surrounded by bright warm colors used to express the bright and warm
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emotions associated with the main character. I used both of these techniques in my own self reflective digital collage. I used two pictures of myself, both representing the main character of the piece. Both pictures strongly expressed emotions. I also used the technique of bright striking colors to focus the attention and create movement throughout the piece. As well as movement, the colors served the purpose of contrasting the two different emotions that are being reflected on. This contrast further produces the main theme of reverse progression, created with the inspiration of Danish Fernandes. In the left picture of Fernandes's work above, the man and his expressive colors are placed on top of a newspaper or article of sorts. I also liked this idea a lot because it adds more of a meaning literally behind the piece.
PLANNING
To start out the planning phase of this project, I sketched and wrote in my sketchbook. I drew out very rough sketches of my inspiration, writing out little details of the art or artist that I discovered in my research. My inspiration page of my sketch book simply has the two artists I used as inspiration and briefly what about them inspired me and my work. My ideas page of my sketchbook took the ideas from my inspiration page and roughly carried them out. Along with the ideas that were produced from the inspiration, my ideas page also had more ideas that evolved from the original ideas. The first idea I had was child me breaking away as older or current me watched all cut apart. This was definitely one of the best ideas in my opinion compared to the others. An idea that I thought was interesting was placing words behind the pictures. This is similar to Danish Fernandes's main piece of inspiration I was using where a man is shown screaming over articles or a newspaper defining defense and defender. I debated what to put behind the picture. I could have newspaper articles or my own writing. If I had my own writing it would be like a diary entry or maybe a story. |
The next step in my planning phase, after looking at ideas from my inspiration, was to plan out the main ideas. I officially decided to have a photo of childhood me and younger me at two opposite corners. To the left is planning out pictures of an older version of me that will be in the bottom right corner of the final piece. i sketched out different pictures that I took of myself trying to determine the best expression. I tried to find the picture with best angle and expression that had the best edges that would be easiest to cut out. I also explained the need for my hair back which ultimately eliminated a few of the pictures taken. Along with this, I also wrote down trying to decide whether the color of my shirt played any part into the artwork. i decided to wear blue in the final pictures to further the representation of the sad theme that surrounded the older version of myself. The photos to the right are the best photos I took. These three had the best expressions that I could produce. Two of these are warmer tones with the middle one taken with less light to produce cooler tones. This was another idea that I played with during my planning phase: whether the tones or hues of the photos could assist with my message and background meaning.
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After deciding what photo to use for the older version of myself, I looked at two photos from when I was three that I found. I saw both expressing happiness and innocence, the left most photo shows my swinging which resembles a very stereotypical enjoyable childhood memory. The photo on the right is of me running which is a personal enjoyable memory. Based on my sketches to the right, I decided to choose the swinging photo. Sketching out the two photos made me realize how much expressive the swinging photo was. My expression is much more demonstrating happiness.and the warm tones of the photo also add to the happiness idea behind it.
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PROCESS
Out of all of the steps in the process of this project, the first and foremost step was to obtain the needed resources. I was able to find a photo taken by my father when I was three years old where I was looking very happy, expressing great joy. This worked perfectly for the childhood photo I needed and after finding it, all I had to do was take a photo of the current me expressing the opposite emotions. To do this I had to make sure it was taken on a high quality camera with decent lighting. I used an iPhone 12 camera with a lamp shining on my face from a front angle to potentially reduce the unneeded shadows. I originally struggled with expressing the correct emotions and looking in the desired direction as well, however, in the end, I was able to obtain a photo that exhibited all the necessary requirements. By doing this first step of finding and creating the suitable photos, I demonstrated my patience and commitment skills. With the two final photos, I demonstrated my technical skills while using photoshop to edit the images. I used the paint brush and refine edge tool to isolate the character from the background of the picture. I did this to eliminate the unnecessary background to focus on the person in the photo instead. Although this step was difficult, tedious, and very time consuming, I was able to complete the first editing step by establishing my tech savvy skills. |
Because I wanted to demonstrate the child me breaking up and away, I tried out many of my ideas to see which one would follow through best. My first idea was to use the lasso tool on Photopea and cut apart the body of the child me character and then from there take out small chucks and have them floating away. I unevenly cut apart other parts as well, attempting to demonstrate the feeling I was trying to represent through this aspect of my digital collage. Before finishing this idea all the way, I came up with a slightly different but very similar idea. I wanted to instead have the body be floating off almost as if in layers. The face is in the front then it goes the body and then goes the legs. similar to the first idea, I had small chunks floating off just like the art pieces in Micaela Lattanzio's series. The two pictures on either sides were experimentation with the necessary tools, trying out different possible ideas to produce the final product
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he produces both in a manner that they express and add to the same emotional theme. In my final piece, I have two characters, older or current me and younger me. these two characters are expressing different and opposite emotions to add to the self reflective theme. The different expressions add to the idea of an emotional theme, however, it is done in a slightly different way than my two inspirations
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REFLECTION
Having never experimented with this medium, I believe that I have generated a very useful skill while creating this digital collage. I have always been interested in creating art on a digital platform. I have seen other digital work that has always interested me and I am happy to say that I have the ability to create similar work. The patience it took to work with this medium will most definitely help me in the future. After fully completing this project three different times and having the photoshop program delete them each time taught me to work with what I have and learn from my mistakes. While completing this project, I vastly increased my research skills to find digital artists that inspired me. I also developed further analyzing skills that helped me determine themes and meanings from my inspiration. Based on this project being my first ever time working with digital media, I am happy and satisfied with final piece.
Having never experimented with this medium, I believe that I have generated a very useful skill while creating this digital collage. I have always been interested in creating art on a digital platform. I have seen other digital work that has always interested me and I am happy to say that I have the ability to create similar work. The patience it took to work with this medium will most definitely help me in the future. After fully completing this project three different times and having the photoshop program delete them each time taught me to work with what I have and learn from my mistakes. While completing this project, I vastly increased my research skills to find digital artists that inspired me. I also developed further analyzing skills that helped me determine themes and meanings from my inspiration. Based on this project being my first ever time working with digital media, I am happy and satisfied with final piece.
CONNECTION TO THE ACT
1. Clearly explain and describe how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationship between your inspiration upon your artwork
Personally, as a striving new artist, I use inspiration as a main and key tool in creating art myself. I believe that all art can be influenced not only by other art but also simply by experiences in life. In this project, both of these concepts were used immensely. Not only was my admiration of Micaela Lattanzio's use of depicting identity able to affect my piece and my adoration of the way in which Danish Fernandes exhibits emotion in this work, but also my experience with identity and emotions in my life also played a role in my final self reflective digital collage. My artist inspirations are what inclines me to bring my own self experience together in the final piece.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The topic of my inspiration was emotion and identity. I believe that Danish Fernandes has a strong sense of overall emotions or essentially he has a good sense in different aspects of emotions. His approach to this topic is to deeply express emotions in his work which is a part of why he is inspiring to me. I admire how he is able to express numerous emotions throughout his collections. Many of his pieces are very contrasting which is interesting how he is able to produce contrasting emotive works so strongly and vividly. Along with Fernandes, Micaela Lattanzio produces her art in a way that specifically regards identity focusing on the loss of identity and the emotions associated with concept. She has an excellent approach towards this topic throughout her work by modeling each creation specifically in the manner to express an emotive identity crisis.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration
Although everyone feels and experiences things differently, perceiving different emotions as good or bad, everyone still goes through emotional states. Life experiences or events often trigger these. Some people are able to express these states to the extreme while others have difficulties expressing themselves. Both cases are perfectly fine, at times, expressive people are able to help non expressive people through their emotional states.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspiration research?
Identity and emotion. These two words sum up the essence of the inspiration I was able to find in my research. I used both thoroughly in my final piece just as Danish Fernandes and Micaela Lattanzio both did.
5. What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the bases of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
I inferred that both of my artist inspirations were able to feel deep emotions. Not only were they able to experience these emotions deeply, but they also held the ability to express themselves or their emotions in a way that moved people at such a heavy level
1. Clearly explain and describe how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationship between your inspiration upon your artwork
Personally, as a striving new artist, I use inspiration as a main and key tool in creating art myself. I believe that all art can be influenced not only by other art but also simply by experiences in life. In this project, both of these concepts were used immensely. Not only was my admiration of Micaela Lattanzio's use of depicting identity able to affect my piece and my adoration of the way in which Danish Fernandes exhibits emotion in this work, but also my experience with identity and emotions in my life also played a role in my final self reflective digital collage. My artist inspirations are what inclines me to bring my own self experience together in the final piece.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The topic of my inspiration was emotion and identity. I believe that Danish Fernandes has a strong sense of overall emotions or essentially he has a good sense in different aspects of emotions. His approach to this topic is to deeply express emotions in his work which is a part of why he is inspiring to me. I admire how he is able to express numerous emotions throughout his collections. Many of his pieces are very contrasting which is interesting how he is able to produce contrasting emotive works so strongly and vividly. Along with Fernandes, Micaela Lattanzio produces her art in a way that specifically regards identity focusing on the loss of identity and the emotions associated with concept. She has an excellent approach towards this topic throughout her work by modeling each creation specifically in the manner to express an emotive identity crisis.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration
Although everyone feels and experiences things differently, perceiving different emotions as good or bad, everyone still goes through emotional states. Life experiences or events often trigger these. Some people are able to express these states to the extreme while others have difficulties expressing themselves. Both cases are perfectly fine, at times, expressive people are able to help non expressive people through their emotional states.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspiration research?
Identity and emotion. These two words sum up the essence of the inspiration I was able to find in my research. I used both thoroughly in my final piece just as Danish Fernandes and Micaela Lattanzio both did.
5. What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the bases of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
I inferred that both of my artist inspirations were able to feel deep emotions. Not only were they able to experience these emotions deeply, but they also held the ability to express themselves or their emotions in a way that moved people at such a heavy level
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kotok, N. (2018, December). Danish Fernandes: Brave, Original, and Fresh. Retrieved from https://www.minus37.com/2018/12/30/contemporary-art-of-danish-fernandes/
Art UPON. (2019, October 27). Micaela Lattanzio - Collage Artist & Artworks on UPON. Retrieved from https://www.artupon.com/micaela-lattanzio/
Art UPON. (2019, October 27). Danish Fernandes - Illustration Artist & Artworks on UPON. Retrieved from https://www.artupon.com/danish-fernandes/
Kotok, N. (2018, December). Danish Fernandes: Brave, Original, and Fresh. Retrieved from https://www.minus37.com/2018/12/30/contemporary-art-of-danish-fernandes/
Art UPON. (2019, October 27). Micaela Lattanzio - Collage Artist & Artworks on UPON. Retrieved from https://www.artupon.com/micaela-lattanzio/
Art UPON. (2019, October 27). Danish Fernandes - Illustration Artist & Artworks on UPON. Retrieved from https://www.artupon.com/danish-fernandes/