Brooklyn Presnell
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Monday, November 21, 2022
Vanessa Rivera Formal Analysis (Sami Pacitto)
Vanessa Rivera’s subjects are her own children and their concepts of childhood. Her composition, Vienna Mermaid, became the “splash screen” for Photoshop 2020. She has three children and she features them all in her artwork. Her website describes her work as “fun” and “whimsical” and her fantastical scenes interest her audience. She even takes commissions for families who want to buy her art featuring their own children and pets.
Rivera fills her scene’s space with her subjects and objects that hint at the story. Whether it be a reference to a book or movie, or not specific like a mermaid in a bathtub her message is understood. There are many different textures used in her scenes to unify her compositions. For example, the second image I’ve inserted below includes the bird’s feathers, the worm, the colorful clothing, and the rocks underneath.
All of her artwork focuses on her children interacting with each other in a fairytale scene. Her inspiration comes from children’s book authors Dr. Suess and Shel Silverstein. Many movies that her artwork references were filmed in cartoons and she creates a live-action version. The Nightmare Before Christmas was created with claymation but Rivera's composition uses her children as actors in her own notable style.
I would love to have my own style that is noticeable like Rivera’s. I plan to incorporate my Quaker parrot Navi into my work as she does with her children. I think it would be interesting to create some interesting scenes for Navi with a whimsical atmosphere to them. Kind of like Navi entering another world.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Under the Influence of Ozan Karakoc
Ozan Karakoc has been designing for over 20 years. He has designed for many well known brands such as; Google, Toyota, and Expedia. A lot of his work is a posed female figure with paintbrush textures, typography and other textures overlayed on the work. He creates vertical compositions and sometimes created a 3D illusion by extending the composition into the margins of the design.
The figures in his design are typically in black and white. Color is added by other elements, most commonly paint brush strokes. Occasionally he uses other monotoned photographs to overlay on different aspects of the model. He also makes parts of their body up using a texture piece or shape.
I am inspired by the variety of texture in his work as well as the pop of color he adds throughout his pieces. There's something very captivating about the way he poses his figures and manipulates textures to fit their figure. I have always been drawn to this style of graphic design even though it is quite different than the style I have.
In my compositions I really want to focus on the figures paired with the pop of red or yellow that he uses in a majority of his work. Occasionally he will use a pop of blue but he always stays within the primary colors. I also really want to bring in the paint strokes that he uses so I will definitely take pictures of different brush strokes and adapt them into the photos. If the composition makes sense for typography I will also add a little bit into the photo.
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Under the Influence - Sena Lor
PhaseRunner
PhaseRunner is a digital artist from the UK, and he was one of the first artist that I watched to help improve my environment paintings or when I need inspiration. He hasn’t revealed his real name yet, but he has a big community on Youtube.
Coming from a digital painting background, PhaseRunner uses a combination of photo manipulation, digital compositing, and digital painting to create beautiful scenes. He doesn’t take his own photos, rather, he uses stock images from EnvatoElements in his works. His works are very cinematic. They’re based on fantasy and sci-fi themed concepts and focuses on fictional environments.
In all of his works, it’s clear that this artist has a great understanding of composition, perspective, scale, lighting, color, and storytelling. He knows where to place focal points, create contrast, and develop interesting shapes. He’s very proficient with Photoshop tools such as color adjustments, masking and selections, blending, and more.
I have a love for fantasy, sci-fi, and digital painting, so PhaseRunner’s works are perfect to use as inspiration for this project. Instead of using stock photos like him, I’m going to take my own photos to create fictional scenes.
Under the influence- Rocky
For this, I chose Stephen Mcmennamy. I enjoy the idea of combining two completely different things together to make a cohesive work. His work mostly consists of two different compositions that have a clear defining line to understand the separation of the images where most of them are photographed and then combined.
In his style, the work consists of distinct objects where the color contrasts with the background so the object stands out and is almost branded. Each work has a distinct tone in a color that is specific to the item.
The concept of the work, it is visually striking because the object is two different things combined that would not normally be seen or the work would play out certain stereotypes or relative shapes. The work is visually appealing but also makes the view take a moment to realize what is actually going on with the picture and understand the representation of certain items and their norm.
I was thinking of instead of combining two photos to do four and have it split like a cross where each corner has a different picture but in the middle combined to make a cohesive image. I would also like to mess around with the different color aspects in how it would affect the representation of the object or contrast where the background would be split into separate colors.
Kelsey McGoldrick- April Greiman
April Greiman is one of the first digital designers in the United States. The digital influence hit Europe much earlier than it came to the US. Greiman pushed for more use of digital technology in design throughout the seventies and early eighties. She does very intricate, unique collages within her work. Many of her works play with photography, textures, and digital manipulation. Her work also gives an almost feminine vibe and after getting to know Greiman it is clear that is most likely intentional.
She plays with space, scale and composition with many of her pieces. She strives to make her work very intentional and have nice context to the space it will be displayed in. When she did her work “hand holding a bowl of rice” she studied the town in South Korea it was going to be displayed in for a month before executing the work.
After examining her work it seems a lot of the photography is of people, whether that is portraits or pictures of their body or parts of their body. She is pretty known for working on portraits as well. I think the secret to her work is this constant layering and playing around with color. I feel in her case less is not more, to not be afraid of going over the top.
I picked April Greiman because I think her work gives me endless opportunities to create unique work of my own with her inspiration. The image above with the leg coming out of the square allows me to have a lot of ideas about how I could do something similar with my own twist. Perhaps multiple body parts coming out of a space into a new space, as well as adding collage-like elements throughout the piece.
Otto Lucas Influence Post
For the Under the Influence project, the artist I am choosing to take inspiration from is Phase Runner, an artist whose main process is photo composition. He is an artist whose focus is mainly of creating fantasy scenes and imagery. He also has a YouTube channel where he documents his creative process on certain images he's made.
Phase Runner's images are mainly of scenery. There is a narrative element to them as well but he focuses on rendering fantastical environments. To do that, he focuses a lot on exaggeration and scale. He also has a lot of images that have a lot of depth and are focused looking outwards from a slightly lower angle.
The inclusion of natural world elements is also a strong point in his works. Whether it's intense rock formations or sprawling forests, there always seems to be some grounding feature of reality to tie the concept together.
Light is also an important part of his works. He focuses a lot on creating dramatic or cinematic lighting in his pieces. Part of his influence is fantasy and comic movies. A lot of his color choices tend to be cooler colors, with pops of warm color.
With taking inspiration from his work, I want to focus on making more environmentally driven images. I also want to make these images feel more cinematic in nature. It's not something I'm used to doing with photo composition and I want to try.
Under Influence Analysis Destiny James
Under the Influence Formal Analysis
For this upcoming Under The Influence project, I will be looking at a young artist named Aliza Razell. Majority of her works are composed with many different styles of photography and art styles. She composites her photographs with interesting focal points that use 2d works like paintings and drawings to reflect the subject.
Her work primarily focuses on one focal point or concept then transcends into the use of her preferred 2d medium. Water color is often used to demonstrate a contrast in the fluidity of the medium and the dynamic between photographs. She also uses contour drawings to help outline whatever subject she wants to reflect on.
Apart from the multimedia works, her composited photographs are highly contrasted with a focal point that uses color to highlight the emotion that she tries to portray. All of Razell's works share the same gloomy emotion or mystical feeling. All emotions related to sadness or loneliness seem to be a common theme/ concept.
For this project, I plan to use Razells work to inspire me to composite both photography and 2d works. Like digital mixed media works, I want to somehow combine my preferred photography style with my 2d mediums to create a combination of portraits and landscapes. I want to add my preferred minimalist style and painting techniques to have two contrasting elements similar to Aliza Razell.
Under The Influence Formal Analysis - Tiana Cohen
The artist I chose for under the influence is Calob Castellon who is a Graphic Designer, Web Designer, and Photographer. A lot of his works are photographs with edits to add glows, sparkles, etcetera. However, he does have works where he composites different pieces together to make a dynamic scene that matches his overall energy and style. He is most well known for blending comic book effects with his photos to make a semi realistic portrait.
Each of his works may have different themes touching different subjects such as superheroes, playing with fire, having superpowers to more simple things like a projection of the weather or a kid surrounded by fireflies. Regardless, you can differentiate his work due to the dramatic style and lighting he uses in the composition. Castellon is talented at setting up light/ using light to help support his piece and create a cohesiveness in the composition.
A lot of Castellon’s works turn normal images into more saturated worlds. An example would be his version of the fourth kind. In this example he takes a photo of his model laying on a stool that’s placed on the bed. The picture starts out warm with the sun coming through the window. He then masks, darkens, liquifies, color shifts, and adds elements to make it seem like the girl and some objects are floating under the blue glow of the window.
I chose this artist because I want to play with adding an unrealistic element in my project. Whether it be a galaxy or a room filled with water I want to play with those elements and I know that I can replicate some of the skills that Castellon is using to enhance my work. Changing the color, playing with light, adding elements to further tie in whatever theme I want will provide useful. Additionally, I hope to implement these techniques while still achieving the same level of quality and detail in my own works.
Under the Influence Formal Analysis - Brooke Buchanan
The artist I will be looking at has really inspired some of my past work, and I continue to be inspired by his story and art. David LaChapelle is an American photographer, who creates these highly composited, camp influenced surrealist portraits. Often times working with creating celebrity portraits. LaChapelle attended North Carolina School of the arts, and worked alongside Andy Warhol for a period of time.
Each of his work takes a bizarre approach, while also often conveying social messages in his works. Each piece is very different, but you can still recognize his work by his style, lighting, and use of color. While each piece is widely differentiating, LaChapelle pays attention to setting the scene, and portraying an atmospheric tone that is really reflected by his style. His subjects often include celebrities, natures, light trails, unrealistic props, and backdrops.
LaChapelle creates these really crisp vibrant colored portraits, that looks hyper realistic. He is really good at created a solid composition, even if there is a lot happening in the pieces, he always makes it work compositionally. He often works with a sexual and ironic undertone, that doesn't overshadow the pieces. Even though his works are highly composited, it looks so natural and real, you really cant tell what is photoshopped.
For my portfolio, I want to extend LaChapelles use of lighting, color, and campy style into my work, and I will be focusing on some of his space themed works. Due to the amount of time left in the semester, I plan to rework some of my past works, while adding a few new works included in my portfolio. I want to focus on detail, and making my compositions look as natural and real as possible.
Who is Bret Maley, Wallace
Who is Bret Maley
Bret Maley is a photoshop composition artist who has had previous occupations as a photographer, professor, and an author on the book “Adobe Master Class”. According to his portfolio, much of his work is featured in magazines like “Photography is Art”, and various “Photoshop” magazines. He also features an online class on Kelbyone where he teaches how to create compositing pieces with family and friend portraits, and the use of wizardry magic like levitation in compositing. Much of his personal work however features outdoor portrait and landscape imagery of some mysterious wonders of nature overtaking everything.
On one of his works featured in his “Adobe Master Class” book called “Post-Apocalyptic”, it features a post-apocalyptic city in ruins. From looking at this photo, we can tell that nature seems to have been retaking this land as not only do overgrown bushes and trees seem to be coming out from some of the windows, but we also see flowers spread out around the subject. There also appears to be a new formation of a mountain presiding into the city itself. Despite the flowers seeming to give a sense of calmness, the atmosphere around the area, including the subject, give a “tired” or “worn-out” feeling as the buildings, and the subject are covered in dirt, or possible blood on the woman. The artist seems to do a great job with the textures of the buildings, and the saturation of the photo to give a sense of sorrow towards the viewer as well. On other works that he has done such as “Valley Catch”, he composites his work through the use of replacing the sky, and changing the atmosphere to the type of warm photo palette that he is aiming for similarly to his Post-Apocalyptic work. Overall, he seems to use many layers of his work in order to get the type of atmosphere and setting that he is trying to create in each piece he creates.
Although it does not reveal the overall description as to what the artist was aiming for, it seems that he was experimenting with different settings at different places whether it would be taking place in the mountain range, or the city that he presides in. It also seems that he tries to introduce a story to his work even if it may or may not be intentional. One way to tell is that he uses the same model with the same clothes and sword for his work on the “Mountain Tower”. This could show a before and after effect. It could be theorized that the woman made her way towards the tower to fight off a possible creature, and later made her way to the post apocalyptic city which shows the possible blood all over her while she still wields the sword. This reveals that she survived the encounter that she may have had at the tower. Bret also does the before and after effect with other photos like the “Hide” and “Seek” photos of his sons exploring the sunny forest.
For my next project, I would like to not only create a composition with nature taking over buildings, but to also add a bit of story to it as well. This could be a transition of nature taking over after several years for each composition piece, or a story about surviving a post apocalyptic world. I have done a project similar to the Architectural blend project, and I would like to expand upon that with more meaning and story towards that concept.
Portfolio to Artist:
Post-Apocalyptic
Valley Catch
Mountain Tower
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