I Don't Apologize for My Opinions (& Neither Should You)

To be perfectly honest, I have a love hate relationship with open ended projects. I have the freedom to create whatever I want, but at the same time the freedom is frightening because of its endlessness. There is no beginning point or set path or idea to jump off of. I guess this is what it’s like to be a real artist, and I got a taste of that through the process of creating these three pieces.

As I’ve mentioned before, I want to create art that matters. I want my art to reveal a message and a strong one at that. I want for viewers to be provoked by what I say, no matter if they agree with it or not. And so I created a variety of three pieces all on the lines of social justice and political statements.

My first piece is a cut paper design with watercolor. Over the course of the year, I haven’t done anything super intricate or intensive, and so I thought by doing cut paper I could expand my horizons of the art I create. The concept of this piece is the idea of environmental activism and protecting the earth. We live on this wonderful planet with extensive forests and animals and flowers, but the increasing factories and pollution only destroy it. Things like climate change, which does exist, are threatening many parts of this Earth. It’s quite ironic that we use natural materials to build infrastructure, but the same buildings and factories happen to take away the little nature we have left. And so, the piece resembles the Earth forming into the trees and flowers, which create the factories. This in hand, affects the leaf which encompasses it all, making it deteriorate at the touch of smoke. I enhanced this idea by using watercolor to paint over each section which represented these factors. For example, the brown enhances the trees, and the grey enhances the smoke. Because of this, the use of color and shape is very important. As is contrast and balance, because of the white space and black space that is created with the cut paper. Although the composition is simple because of the leaf’s placement on paper, the detail and alignment of the sections within the leaf itself makes up for it. In the past, it was hard to figure out what I was trying to say, so my main goal for this was to make it simple but still get my point across.

The second piece is the comic strip. I have not done any digital art this entire year, and thought I should dabble in that. My portfolio is 2D design, since many of my pieces have a design aspect to them. And so, I decided to take this even further by creating a story. Before my passion for politics, I wanted to be an animator. So I thought I would take a step towards this by creating a comic. In response to the recent election, many people have protested, especially those in the LGBT community. Having elected someone who doesn’t see eye to eye on their community is very hard. And so, I wanted to create a comic strip that would make things feel light and at ease. And so the three panels relay the message that even if the city may be on fire, there’s always hope and love somewhere, all you have to do is find it. I think the use of color is really important in this piece, mainly because the LGBT community is known for it’s colorful pride flag and pride festivals. Also, I tried to create space and value on a 2D digital canvas. I have never created digital art before, so I watched a lot of tutorials on creating value and used those techniques to do so. I also think the settings and placement of objects (such as the balloons, shovel & X, or the speaking bubbles) added to the unique composition. I have wanted to create a comic for a long time, and although it was a rushed process, it didn’t turn out too shabby.

Finally, the last breadth piece is the women’s rights campaign photo, which leans more towards being a poster. Equality is very important to me. I have acknowledged with racism in my art, so I thought gender equality would be something new to tackle. My goal for this was to provoke the audience and to show the audience the importance of women’s rights. When we live in a world where women get abused and don’t get treated equally as their male counterparts, it’s alarming. We may live in the 21st century, but there is still so much to be done about gender equality. And so I wanted create a piece which calls for action and acts a campaign poster. Color is a really important aspect to this piece because I really dialed up the redness. The contrast of the bright red letters dripping down from her eyes against the black and white face is kind of disturbing. However, this really ingrains in your mind and speaks volumes. My favorite aspect about this piece is the lighting. I wanted it to be really dramatic and I think I pulled it off. This creates more contrast and a lot value. The message behind the poster works for abuse, women’s rights, and whatever the audience feels, and because it’s so dramatic the whole poster is even more effective. I love the way the poster fills up the canvas, so this piece was turned out really well in my opinion.

Overall, my pieces turned out a lot better than I expected them too. Out of all three, I think the cut paper is the weakest, maybe because it stands out more and seems more simple. If I were to do this again, I would’ve spent a lot more time on the last two panels of the comic strip. I was very rushed to get it done, even if I came outside of class nearly every day the last week to get it done. They are much more sloppy and just not up to my expectations. In the future, I would love to work with more digital drawings and enhance my skills and become more comfortable with the tablets. I did a lot of exploring for these three breadth pieces, because of that I think you are able to see the variety of work I can create, whether it’s intricate, digital, or photography. I’m quite pleased with the end products and their messages are very important to me, because of that this entire assignment was (in my eyes) pretty successful.