Digital Collage |
Title: I Am
Size: 24 inch x 36 inch - Resolution 170 Medium: Photoshop - Photopea Completion: October 2022 EXHIBITION TEXT
The digital collage is called "I Am", I chose this title because not a lot of people know me or my ethnicity and also because I didn't really like my ethnicity. In this piece I want to present who I am and what I am, I want to represent my ethnicity since not a lot of people know about it. My ethnicity is Karen (Kuh-ren) and I am proud of that and even though I am an introvert, shy, and timid person I am willing to express how I feel through my art work and show how proud I am of my culture and who I became.
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Inspiration
‘Reachin’ Round’ by Nat Girsberger
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Under the sun by Nat Girsberger
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My inspiration came from this artist named Nat Girsberger, whose websites I came across while doing research. I looked at her website and discovered that she had created numerous digital collages, which really inspired me because the majority of them were similar to what I wanted to accomplish in my own digital collage. When I came across two of her pieces, "reachin' round" and "under the sun," it really helped out a lot with how I wanted to set up my format and it really inspired and helped me with how I was going to incorporate different things into my planning sketch before I started to work on my digital collage. I was kind of struggling with the set up of my digital collage because while I was sketching I didn't really like how I drew and set up my drawing. I really liked how she used line work, color, shape, and value in her piece "reachin' round" since that's kind of what I wanted to do in my piece and also because her Photoshop work is incredibly detailed, crispy, and memorable. I liked how you could readily interpret what was going on in the piece (under the sun), which is kind of what I wanted for my digital collage. I wanted people to look at it and be able to quickly interpret and define what was going on in the piece. When I first saw her piece "under the sun" on her website and social media, I particularly liked the concept behind it since it was about self-love and in her post she asked the question, "Do you love yourself?" The person in this painting appears to be staring up at the sky and debating whether or not she loves herself. Self-love is really difficult for me because I felt like I couldn't live up to what my family expected of me and that I was sort of a disgrace to my family because they wanted what every Asian parent wants in their child and I couldn't do that, which made me dislike myself. However, at the end of the day, I try to love myself and do what I enjoy instead of being the kind of person my parents wants me to be and I wanted to inspire others to do the same. Because of her meticulous method and the way she added some artistic aspects, I particularly enjoyed Nat Girsberger's digital collage. Her work is crisp and clear, and you can't even tell that it was created using Photoshop.
Planning
The first stage in planning was to decide what I wanted to include in my digital collage because the article I wrote was about me and my ethnicity. I began by drawing whatever came into my mind. The first thing I wanted to include in my drawing was a monk because around my house, there are a few sculptures and posters of monks. I'm not really proud of my planning sketch, but that's best I could get it. I want to incorporate these monks in my digital sketch to represent my religion and culture. I am going to incorporate two hands into my digital collage and the hand I'm representing is a praying hand. Every time I have to go to a temple I would have to sit and put my hands together and pray, not putting our hands together when praying is a sign of disrespect.
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The second round of planning took me some time since I was trying to decide what I wanted for the digital collage, but after some consideration, I decided that perhaps I should include a photo of me with the Karen (kuh-ren) flag while dressed traditionally. In this sketch it's not very detailed because this is only a rough idea of how I want my digital collage to look like. I decided to draw 3 different position to represent my feelings and in this sketch I ended wanted the 3rd drawing of the girl I drew in my final piece because I wanted to take a picture where I'm looking up at my beliefs and to show how proud I am of my culture. I decided not to show my face, to represent my personality because In real life I am a introverted shy person.
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Putting the first and second planning sketches together was the third and last part of the planning process. This sketch represents the final product as I envision it. It took me a while to put everything together since I had trouble deciding how to add the monk and myself in the sketch for my digital collage. In the final sketch it was kind of hard for me to draw the monk because I couldn't fit the monk I drew in the circle. I tend to draw bigger, which made it hard for me to draw the monk in the circle. In this final sketch you could tell that one of the monks I drew was not in a circle and that was because I was struggling to draw it very small to fit in the circle. This is only a rough sketch to how I want my digital collage to turn out.
Here is how the final sketch looks/how I want my photo shop to look for the final piece. ---------------------------------------------------> |
Process
I had a hard time capturing images because of the poor lighting and the odd angles I chose to photograph from. I also made an effort to shoot photos with my phone camera at its highest resolution to get the best photo. I eventually succeeded after a few tries in getting the desired pictures. After I finished editing all the photos I had taken, I collected them all and uploaded them to my Google Drive.
Here are the pictures I am using for my digital collage
After gathering and uploading all the photos, I began composing my photo’s in photopea. Because I wasn't really comfortable with the tools and was having trouble trying to add multiple layers, Photopea was causing me trouble as I worked. Photopea didn't provide me many alternatives when I tried to modify or add layers to my work when I was working on it. When I added a layer, I started to upload a second photo I had taken to that layer, but when I did that, the background changed to the photo I had intended for my first layer. This really annoyed me because I could only edit one photo I had taken.
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Before
Here is how the process went while I was trying to edit - As you can see there is a background and a layer and I click on the first layer to add a different picture I took |
After
Here is another picture of my process - As you can see it completely deleted my first layer and changer the background to the picture I wanted for my first layer |
In both of the pictures above I was trying to get familiar with the tools used in photopea.
I had a hard time editing my photos, but after viewing a few tutorials to learn how photopea worked, I started to look into every tool it offered, which really helped and made editing a lot simpler for me. Once I figured out how to cut/add different photographs onto different layers in my work, my process proceeded a lot more smoothly. I had the idea to add some artistic components to my piece while I was editing, and the kinds of elements I wanted to include were shape, color, and form.
Here are screenshots of the process of figuring out how each tool worked
I was going to do a beach background, but I chose not to because I wanted to show the traditional skirt instead since it represents my culture |
Here are some pictures of my process of editing my work
I also tried to add the art elements I wanted here while I was editing my work -You can see how I use the tools to add those elements |
I explored the different tools in photopea so I can get comfortable with using photopea since I wanted to be able to work on this piece smoothly. I did have a difficult time using the tools when I was experimenting with those tools though, as it gave me a hard time trying to edit my work, it didn't let me do/edit how I wanted my final piece to look, and because of that I did a little more research on how to use Photopea to help my process of editing my work to go a lot smoother. Using high-quality assets, the appropriate tools (which help me determine what I need/don't need), and being consistent while working on the digital collage were some of the methods I wanted to apply throughout the project. My source of inspiration was really helpful to me because it allowed me to refer to the various techniques I wanted to use in my digital collage.
Here is how the final piece of my project turned out
The final piece of this artwork is called "I AM" My ethnicity Karen is not to be made fun of because I know whenever the word Karen is mention they would think it's the type of Karen you see on the internet. Karen is pronounced as Kuh-ren and we are an ethnic minority |
Although I would have liked to have been able to add more photographs and do a lot more with it, it was the best I could do to make my final product seem how I wanted it to. The final version of my piece came out reasonably well; it is precisely how I intended it to appear. My editing process was greatly facilitated by my usage of sketches, which served as a road map for me as I edited. The finished piece is titled I AM because I wanted to express who I am. To do this, I added a monk sculpture and poster to represent my religion, my culture through what I wear, my home flag to represent my ethnicity/race/language, and everything else in this digital collage to express my interests and personality. I also want to express in this piece despite being timid and introverted, I will make an effort to push myself outside of my comfort zone and to convey my emotions via my work.
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Background Essay
Hello! My name is Eh Soe Moo, and I was born in Thailand. In 2008, I came to the U.S with only my parents and brother. My parents made the decision to move to the U.S because they want my brother and me to have access to better healthcare and education. Because so few people are aware of my heritage, I wasn't always proud of it when I was growing up and I thought I was embarrassing my parents because they constantly made comparisons to other kids and talked about how wonderful their child are as if I wasn’t good enough for them. They are the kind of stern Asian parents who expect the best of everything from their kids or be better then anyone else. I used to get teased for having a last name that sounds like an animal, but many people of my ethnicity have the name "Moo," which denotes a fearless and strong leader and when I was younger I used hate saying my last name because I was afraid of people making fun of me which led me to feeling more shy and insecure about myself. I also didn't feel particularly proud of my religion because I detested having to attend Buddhist activities or temples because every time I went, there were a lot of strangers around, and my parents would force me to interact with other people. Because I don't know what to say I always keep repeating what I want say in my thoughts before I actually start talking to someone, I find it difficult to interact with people I don't know well. Since there weren't many people of my ethnicity living in our area yet and my parents didn't speak a lot of English, I never really had a kind of environment where I can talk to lot of people when I was young. This is why I get nervous and anxious whenever I have to go somewhere full of people I don't know. My parents chose to force me to attend gatherings and parties as I grew older since more immigrants who shared my parents' language began to arrive in the U.S.There were also adherents of my religion, which led to my parents making me visit the temple whenever they held an event. As I grew older and more mature, I began to understand that everything my parents did was to help me learn right from wrong. They also taught me what Buddhism was all about and how to always be proud of who I am. When I became aware of this, I decided that I wanted to learn more about my heritage, Buddhist prayer, and the purpose of prayer. When I accomplished that, I began to see how important Buddhism and my heritage is and now I will always stick by my parents and be proud of who and what I am. Since I felt that I couldn't live up to what my family expected of me and that I was sort of a disgrace to my family since they wanted what every Asian parent wants in their child and I couldn't accomplish that, I began to despise myself. As a result, I found it extremely difficult to love myself, but at the end of the day, though, I strive to love myself and pursue my interests rather than trying to be the person my parents want me to be.
Reflection
I was quite pleased with the outcome of my final painting. It resembled the sketch I created as a model for my digital collage quite a bit. It was similar to my source of inspiration, and that made my process run much more quickly and smoothly. I drew the sketch because I wanted the editing of my work to run much more quickly and smoothly. Some of my finished piece's components struck me as being pretty good, but I wish I could have added more details and perhaps a few more images to keep it from appearing to be entirely blank. My piece's lack of detail was the only aspect of it that I didn't particularly enjoy. I wished I could have used more intricate approaches and perhaps added more artistic features to make my work look crisper and cleaner. If I ever worked on a digital collage again, I might take more photos, utilize more tools and approaches, and lay out a more complete sketch to assist me navigate through the process of working on the collage.
Critique
Similarities
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Differences
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Connection to ACT question
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
I was able to decide what I wanted to include in my piece and what format to utilize thanks to the source of my inspiration. My artwork was created in response to the influence my inspiration had on it. Despite the fact that my motivation got me through the procedure, the results were different.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The overall approach the author has a regarding to my inspiration was describing myself, describing who I am/what I am, and self-love.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Culture can be define in different ways and it can be used in things like art or a tradition. To me culture can represent who we are and it also represent our ethnicity which is exactly what I want my piece to represent which is my culture.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central idea and theme about my inspirational research is culture,ethnicity, and self-love. I want my piece to represent me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Some inferences I made while reading my research was the meaning of the art piece and how culture can be incorporated in art.
I was able to decide what I wanted to include in my piece and what format to utilize thanks to the source of my inspiration. My artwork was created in response to the influence my inspiration had on it. Despite the fact that my motivation got me through the procedure, the results were different.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The overall approach the author has a regarding to my inspiration was describing myself, describing who I am/what I am, and self-love.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Culture can be define in different ways and it can be used in things like art or a tradition. To me culture can represent who we are and it also represent our ethnicity which is exactly what I want my piece to represent which is my culture.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central idea and theme about my inspirational research is culture,ethnicity, and self-love. I want my piece to represent me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Some inferences I made while reading my research was the meaning of the art piece and how culture can be incorporated in art.
Citation
Citation in MLA format
- “Nat Girsberger.” Nat Girsberger, http://www.natgirsberger.com/.