Statements

Here are my pieces for the Make A Statement assignment.

The first is a piece about cannabis. When I found out that the piece did not have to be a political statement, just something we felt strongly about, I chose to switch gears from a legalization argument to my feelings about it. The phrase earth and sky speaks as to the way cannabis has two distinct sides to it: the physical and the spiritual. It has power in both worlds, the realm of the earth and the elevated realm of the sky. Much like how the Native Americans perceived tobacco smoke, we can watch the smoke from a bowl traveling into the sky, joining the other spirits there. Artistically, I wanted to do something I hadn't done before. The intent was to do some nice clean design work with plenty of negative space and an interesting color scheme.

The second piece is in regards to this election. I chose to take masks of Obama and McCain and reference the Masks of Comedy and Tragedy. This whole thing has been one incredibly grandiose theatrical performance and the curtain is about to fall. You'll notice that there is no frowning mask. The audience will be the tragedy, but when they are they will not be on the stage. They'll be walking the streets, droning away at the day.

The third piece depicts a zombie in a business suit. I think conceptually the image speaks for itself. I tried following a tutorial for this one. It was very indepth and the guy's end result was amazing. However, it was a video tutorial in french, so I had to just watch and try to follow a long with no words (not to mention his photoshop was in french as well). It didn't work out that well. If I were to try this tutorial again I would pick a better starting image, one with a higher resolution and more detain in the facial region. The one I started with was a little bit blown out in the face and didn't have good texture like you would want in something like this. Anyway, and interesting try, but not completely sucessful.