Name: Antonette Nolan
Montage Title: This Is War
Medium: Photoshop
Date: Friday, February
20th 2015
Technical
Within This Is War I used several new tools and technical steps that I had
not previously had much experience with. These include using the clone stamp on
the forest behind the cabin, refining the edges by feathering when deleting the
background surrounding the body of Christ (and other images), and opacity
changes on nearly all layers.
Idea or Concept
My initial idea of “The Invisible”
consisted mainly of the dangers and evil (demonic influences, Satan) found both
in the spiritual realm and on earth, the moral entities (angels, God) and the
two forces' connection with humanity. The concept changed slightly as I worked
on the art, however. I found myself viewing the piece as a representation of
spiritual warfare more and more as I progressed. This, obviously, lead me to title
the piece This Is War. The missiles
and bombs, soldiers, and gas mask impart a sense of the tension and 'war'
between good and evil. Even the feathers, to me, speak of war. As a child I was
nearly always pretending that I was a Native American or Amazon warrior (I
guess that is inevitable when growing up with a lot of fairly violent
brothers), and thus the feathers remind me of fistfights and wrestling ('wars')
of days past.
Influences
No particular artist (that I can
think of!) influenced my work in this project. I did, however, find myself contemplating
several hip human rights-focused Facebook pages and their promotional material
when I was working on the montage. I think that they at least may have affected
how I used different opacity levels in certain areas (especially the gas mask
within the clock face).
Composition
I balanced the composition asymmetrically, with most of the “weight” in This Is War on the left side (specifically in my dark portrait photo). I intended most of the emphasis in the montage to be on the portrait, and believe I succeeded for the most part through use of contrast and uniqueness (my face and the peacock feather are eye-grabbing as a result of both the stark difference in value and because the feather is in an unusual place), and size (the portrait is by far the largest photo in the foreground). My eyes first focus on the portrait of myself on the left, then move up and right to the cabin, the clock face, the figure of Christ, and the gas mask in the right-hand corner. They then move down the figure’s legs and with the soldiers and flying birds to the middle of the window. They follow the lighter birds down to the rocket and missiles near the bottom left-hand corner and keep with the flock of birds which moves up and towards the leopard’s open mouth and body (which leads back to the Christ’s corpus). Each of the images is placed on a specific angle and made a certain size in order to push the viewer’s eye in a circular motion around the entire montage.
Motivation
I have, as I explained in my
brainstorming piece, always had an interest in both good and evil spiritual
influences on earth. My strong conviction that calling up demons “for fun” is
incredibly ignorant and dangerous was, I suppose, the real ‘backbone’ in terms
of this piece’s motivation. I wanted to explore and create visual depictions of
the very real threat that Satanic activities pose to the human soul.
Critical Assessment
Personally, I found the figure of
Christ and the gas mask on the clock face the most interesting and successful
part of the entire montage. The opacity differences and overlap of layers
really surprised me with an edgy-yet-classy end result. If I had had additional
time, I believe that I may have replaced the image of the log cabin with
another that ‘goes with the flow’ in a more seamless manner. As well, I would
attempt to load and use new bird brushes; I had to reuse (and thus rotate and
erase parts) of the few I had access to.
No comments:
Post a Comment