Maddie Ball's Digital Imaging

  Final! After the last in progress critique, I started thinking about my "why" a lot.  I decided that I wanted to represent the efforts I have been making to really find myself these past few months after really losing sight of myself through a toxic relationship as well as the toxic friendships I had had in my life for so long.  I tried to depict this through an abstract portrait where you can't really tell what you're looking at and you have to really look and find me in there.  I then decided to use the repetition technique because I really like the way it looks and it can also contribute to the idea of the different versions of myself I have gone through while doing my soul searching.  I wanted to have the effect of me almost shaking my past off as I move toward the future so I used the splatter brush tool a lot.     I blended my background layers together then added the picture of myself.  I always try to start with a background with so...

  I chose to do a self portrait for my final project and really take advantage of the different blending modes to bring out different colors in my work.  My art lately has been more abstract so I would love to show that in my self portrait as well and share my style.  

  This is what I have ended up with even though I think I want t push it a little bit further, I'm just not quite sure how.  I am happy with how it looks right now but still wonder if I should push it further and how I could do that.  

  I decided to change my idea to show bits and pieces of the drive I make from Boone to my home town since I go through basically all of North Carolina. 

 For this project I'm having trouble deciding how much of myself I want to put out there.  My first thought for this project was to show the fluctuations in my anxiety and depression throughout the Covid Pandemic as well as the toxic relationship I was in at the time, but that's a little heavy...  Another idea I've had is to show the changes in the outdoors throughout the year during different seasons, since we are in such a beautiful place where you can really tell when the seasons change.  I could combine different photos of my own over the time I have attended App State or use photos from the internet.  

 

 

 

 

 

  I really enjoyed this outcome from experimenting with the different blending modes.

  For my icon, I chose Frida Kahlo.  She has been such a consistent icon in the art world for so long and her face is so recognizable I believe she's a perfect fit for me and this project.  

I had a lot of fun experimenting with all of the different tools.  The part of this image that I had the most fun with was checking out the different brush strokes I could make with the paint brush and the different fill effects as well. The bottom half is where that shows and I think the almost abstract effect really reflects my style as an artist.  I ended up completely changing my Fantasy portion into a volcano opposed to the sun or my solar system idea.  I am really happy with the way it turned out especially with how little experience I had.   

  Being brand new to Illustrator has been a little tough for me but so far, I'd like to think I'm getting the hang of things.  I also had trouble uploading my work so far so this is actually a screenshot of my work... I'm thinking of using the lamp as a sun and creating a solar system around it or turning it into a sunrise or sunset.  

Appliance: Lamp