I will be working with my own favourite images. Most of these will be the festival photographs because they inspire me the most to do something with them.
At the moment I will be using Photoshop to manipulate an illustration and just working on ideas and developing for the final piece.
I was looking through the Sun newspaper and I came across the swedish artist Erick Johansson who is a 25 year old student from Gothenburg who takes photographs and alters them on his computer to give a fantasy outcome. The photographs are amazing:
There are many more fantastic and inspiring pictures but here I'll only add a few. This is one of the artists that inspired me the most to manipulate photographs to look like something else. Just for now I've been playing around with photographs using the stamp tool on Photoshop, mixing one or more photographs together to see what works and what doesn't as well as trailing myself for new, expanded ideas.
This was made using the stamp tool on Photoshop. It is one image being laid upon another.
This image was also created using the stamp tool. I have taken people away from the festival setting and put them into a winter scene with snow and land and trees.
This image was done using the stamp tool. I used the flower brush stamp and I stamped the flags onto a plain white background. I really like this effect.
This was the first one that I played around with and that is why it doesn't look so great but practice makes perfect. Again I used the stamp tool to stamp the Glastonbury 40 sign onto the background of a crowd at download festival.
I found a zodiac stamp and using a photograph of pink flowers that were at Glastobury I stamped onto a plain white background.
Because the festival was so spiritual I thought this was a good stamp to use and the flowers show the beauty and freedom of the festival.
Again using the stamp tool I took pieces from images and added to another. The background is an ordinary setting in a busy town. I took the images of strange looking people that do not fit into this environment, only at a festival or rave would people look like this. I added these images to the normal environment to show the contrast.
I haven't really felt that these pieces are leading me very far and I haven't yet learned many of the skills required to manipulate a photo in such a way as Eric Johanson does. I like the look of the photo's I have created but they need more and I feel like I can give them more depth and interest if I play around with scale. I did this in my last project so I think it would be good to carry it on.
In my last project I played around with imagery relating to scale. I looked a lot into comparisons and what I felt was of importance I made large scale and what I felt was not very important were of a small scale. I then switched it switched it round and made what people look down on and treat with lack of importance I made into large scale and vice versa. Its a curiosity to see whether people's opinions would change if size was to be changed. It was because of and idea I had a long time ago. I thought that if a person was to be put in a room full of everything twice the size of him/her, they may start to feel not only small physically but mentally. I wondered if it would weaken a person. This was merely down to wondering why humans should be the superior race and if we were faced with something bigger, would we back down? and how would we react to that?
Again I have been playing around with images and scale making a few things that I felt were important (big) things to the festival larger than there original size.
Once I had played around with scale I found that a lot of my pictures look into the horizon of the festival and are of long distance so objects and people appear smaller the further you and this got me thinking about perspective and how everything goes smaller and to a point and so I have planned to draw a few images that join to a point but include aesthetics of the festival for example flags and tents
Once I had drawn a few pictures I thought of broadening this and trying to make it 3D. My initial idea was to create a 3d model of the festival. This itself would play with scale as it would be much smaller than life size, maybe just a metre or two big. At first I thought of making the structures all one size but then I thought to use my idea of size due to importance and make what I feel are at the higher end of the scale bigger.
When playing with perspective everything goes smaller towards the end so I was wondering whether to put the important things at the front so they would be bigger but then I decided that it wouldn't look how I'm trying to make it look how I want it so I am just going to stick with placing them as I see them in my head as an image and just make things bigger and smaller according to how I want them.
I had originally made the 3d miniature models using typical materials such as wood and cotton but then I decided to be more creative and create the Miniature models out of things that I would find at a festival such as waterproof material from raincoats or tents and beer cans or baked beans wrappers. With these materials I can make miniature tents and flags and stages and then make a model again considering scale and perspective also.
As a model this worked great and if I could afford it I would love to make a model out of wood and make it a lot bigger.
I started remembering that when you're at a festival you tend to look at it with tunnel vision, you look straight on to where you are going next, it is mostly due to looking onto what or who you are going to bump into next as there is a lot of clutter and usually being under the influence of something this can happen a lot. The tunnel vision seems to look directly down through the crowd and past flags waving through the air. This got me thinking and when I thought about how I could link this with perspective it gave me the shape of a cone. A cone would be my tunel vision and next I was thinking about what I could do with this.
I didn't want to use the 3D models because even though I thought they looked good, they don't hold the character that I need them to have. I am extremely passionate about festivals and I need my work to show that.
Cones always seem intriguing to look down to see what's on the other side or to see the world through a small hole and so it seemed a fun idea to create a festival world within a cone. This would also apply to scale as it is not life size, obviously that would be impossible unless I was to create a festival. But that could be something to look into doing at a later date if I have enough money. The objects in the cone will start of bigger around the edges and gradually get smaller as they go towards the point.
The easier option would be to make the cone out of card and that way it is easily moved about and bended but sturdy enough to support the miniature festival within it.
I found that adding the miniature models to the cone such as the flags I couldn't properly support them and they kept falling over so I thought that using photographs would be a good option but there is chance of the piece looking cheap and rubbish.
Before I mentioned how I want to make this project more personal to me because of the huge passion and fascination that I have for festivals. I still have all of the photographs and I still find myself constantly looking through ones from years ago. I love festivals. I go to relax, completely unwind, and I usually find that I come back feeling so positive and (trying not to sound too weird) spiritually healed in a way. I love the way everyone comes together as a positive community, they all want to have fun and there's no one stopping that, everyone is accepting and peaceful. There is a huge freedom at festivals. There's always somebody telling the craziest stories, or someone always drinking too much or taking too many drugs. There are always people jamming and singing, people sat around fires, people laughing, people being one together because they can. Festivals are so far away from reality and that's why I always rush to go back. Everything is accepted, the craziness is wanted and always loved, Even the few naturists that wander the paths and the random guy dressed like a whoopee cushion, and so now I would like to focus on myself and the festival.
I first started thinking about how the festival makes me feel. It makes me feel disjointed like I am free and can do whatever the hell I like. There is no need to worry about what other people think, most of the time they don't care and if they do then most likely you'll never see them again. At a festival you feel disjointed from reality and you live in a dream, you are also disjointed from a stereotype and you become someone wanting the same as everyone else, a person wanting to have fun and a person that fought and sweat and stressed over trying to get a ticket to get there.
I felt that these images I produced are a good example of being disjointed.
At festivals it is not only the festival that creates the fun, it's all about the people. I like to think that the festival is me and I am the festival. At Glastonbury I was told alot that the festival was completely me and it was my personality in a festival so I want to do something that shows the festival within me. My personality alongside the festival and so again I started manipulating photographs and this is what I have so far produced:
Here I was keen on the collage effect, in fact I really wanted to make a collage but affording it was difficult and I couldn't do it but I found out a way of doing this on photoshop and I really enjoyed doing it. I grouped loads of photo's together and using the stamp tool I formed them into the shape of me. This is supposed to show the personality of the festival within me.
With this piece it is hard to pick out where I am because the photo seems to look like a jumble of images but in a way it portrays what I want and that is how everything comes together and becomes one.
I also started looking into the pyschosis and spirituality of the festival. It is extrememly spiritual and warm with it and so I played around with a few images and made them into stamps. Two are Divinci images of the brain which I have used in the same method as the others, with the collage of photographs
I really like this image! It's trippy and interesting, just like Glastonbury festival is like.
This image applies to the spirituality of the festival. I also like it because I got a palm and tarrot card reading there. I created this using yet again the same method and I really like it.
From looking at this piece I got onto thinking about maps. The palm is like a map to spiritual readers and it supposedly holds the story to past, present and future. The palm is mapped out into different sections that tell different things. They are perhaps a map to the brain just like reflexology is to the body
A map is a guide and often a much needed source, especially when visiting a festival for the first time. It shows what it there, where it is at, what you can do and gives you a great idea of what is going on and how your time there is going to be.
The map is the festival and this is my other way of being one with the festival, how it and I come together
I am going to take the map idea further because I like it and how I can involve myself with it.
Here I created a map that folds out and 2D images pop up so it is like a pop up festival. The images are of what I saw at Glastonbury festival and I have placed them in the correct place on the map.
I wanted to experiment with the map idea and I really like the way this looks. I really like the 3D look, It makes the map look fun and exciting. I would deffinately go to a place that has a map like this.
I thought about making 3D objects to place on the map following the idea I had before by making them out of object that you would find at a festival. I made a little camp site including tents, flags, a person, a campfire and even the stone circle
Here I even set light to the campfire made out of tobacco. It looked really realistic and I could imagine little people living there.
I wondered how I could progress this and make it different. I have been getting bored of simply producing photographs and manipulating them. I thought about trying it out myself without the use of Photoshop and I wanted to put writing over it. Peace and love are the most important ones relating to the festivals and this is probably due to the photo’s I have taken of me next to two large sculptures saying love and peace. I wanted to use the same kind of materials again and this is what I came up with.
I photographed through the peace sign onto the map of Glastonbury with the 3D models on it
No comments:
Post a Comment