Project 1: Images and Artist Statement

For this work, I was inspired by the idea of "masks" in many different cultures, often associated with theater. My heaviest sources of inspiration were kabuki theater in Japan, commedia dell'arte in traditional Italian theater, and modern carnevale in Italy. The character I wanted to portray with this artwork was a shadow that inhabited many different fashion forms; these forms represented broad, hard to distill concepts. I achieved this in Photoshop through a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting. In contrast, I also created 6 illustrator images. However, I wanted these images to be simplistic. I wanted them to represent a distilled, advertiser friendly and presentable version of broad and unknowable concepts.

I also pulled upon the concept of masks as a symbol for identity. Masks often represent hiding, or changing oneself to fit a narrative. Therefore, the shadow that inhabits these concepts and fashions changes it's identities on a whim. I used color to further communicate these concepts. I wanted these colors to show that these concepts are broad and representative (thus the one colored theme). To further tie these 6 illustrations into the illustrator illustrations, I also used monochromatic color schemes for them.

I actually made each of the six photoshop illustrations duos to represent further the interchangeability of the identity of this character. Flora contrasts fauna, moon contrasts sun, and stone contrasts gem.

In critique, I found that I tried to tackle too big of a concept. It wasn't super easy to understand what I was trying to communicate just by looking at the images; I think that I could work to make this idea a bit more communicable, or narrow down my message so that I could easily represent it with symbolism. I think I could have better incorporated the font of the images in the photoshop images as well, and carry what I did with moon's piece over to the other ones I did. I think I could have axed the type altogether on my illustrator images. Overall, I have a lot I could have improved on, but I'm really happy with my results.

Photoshop Images

Illustrator Images