For this project, I considered various themes and narrowed down to my growth in art or anxiety and decided on the former as I found it apt to wrap up last project of 2D with it (and anxiety’s just depressing to talk about so…)
I decided on these equations:
Me when I was young + Father’s encouragement and influence=growth
Me when I was in school + expectations from school and parents = desire to escape
Me venturing out to achieve my dreams + rejection = devastation
Me at the brink of losing all hope + ADM’s acceptance = search for a new sense of identity
I wanted to use a girl to represent myself at first and to show her growth both physically and stylistically (through digital art/painting) but thought it to be too direct. I chose to represent myself as a plant in the end as I think that plants are good symbols of growth.
As I was thinking about color schemes, I realised that analogous scheme has yellow, orange and red orange close together and it reminds me of autumn. Hence, I was inspired to use the seasons to further emphasise on my emotional and mental state during these stages of growth.
I did this as an initial draft, with two blocks of blue at the back for the sky as a full blue would be too plain. However, I found the design uninteresting and lacking. Prof suggested that I look at minimalistic styles that make the items pop out due to their colors and I found that many blends the different shades of a color to create a stronger gradient and depth. Below are some examples that I have found.
Although the second picture uses the monochromatic color scheme, the buildings were able to pop out due to the shading and the blending of shades that create depth.
So I tried to do blending and got this. Prof also suggests that I use colors in the background as my shadow and highlight.
After doing some research, I found an artist called James White who likes to use colors in the background as his highlight and shadow.
The blue in the background is used as the highlight and a sort of variation of the red/pink in the background circle is used as shadow. I believe that this makes the object in focus pop out a lot and decided to do so too for mine.
I used blue in the background as the shadow and red orange as my highlight and this made my shoot look more 3D.
I still found it quite boring and as I was researching, I came across these.
This reminds me of a series of superhero posters that I saw and I really like the image within an image idea.
These posters show the heroes’ origins and their outcome and I decided that I can do the same for mine by containing my plant with a girl’s head and showing my growth through changes in the girl’s head (head tilting, features more sharpened etc. to show physical growth and changes in mental state).
It also feels like a window into my head (literally) and thus my inner world.
At first I wanted to portray the restriction I suffered from in school with a bell jar that the tree breaks and grows out of.
But the bell jar looked out of place and I realised that I can contain the tree with the girl’s head instead (it effectively becomes a mold). I then used the head to represent the environment that I was in.
This panel is for the “desire to escape” part. The mold then symbolises my restrictive environment (dull coloured as I hated the environment and was miserable in it).
At first I was told that it doesn’t look like a little girl so I made her features less defined and made her smile more to contrast with the frustration and lack of happiness later on.
Also, compared to the first draft, I changed the two blocks of blue into bands of different shades of blue. After reading some feedback, I realised that I should have looked more into smooth gradients (gradual) change in shades instead of bands of color as it would look smoother and more natural.
For the last panel, I was quite worried as I could not think of a way to reverse the environment to make it a “sunshine after the rain” situation when a rebirth/regrowth happens.
However, I came across this poster during research.
And I found it very interesting the way the black swan was morphed into the shoe and realised that if I am to use complementary orange and blue colors for my last panel, I could make a sun “grow” out of the girl’s head.
And this fits into my concept as in ADM I am now recognised for the ideas in my head instead of my memorisation skills.
I had a lot of fun with this project but I think that I could have done better had I learnt vectorising (instead of using the brush tool and drawing with a tablet which =rough lines/wayward lines that are ugly :((((((( ) and I could have done more subtle changes to the design to make it more meaningful (e.g. the girl can smile and tilt her head upwards in the end). I will pay more attention to details in the future and be less sloppy!!