Evaluation.

I like the topics in this assignment however i find the technology too difficult and struggled to achieve what i wanted to. If i could do it again i would use ma sketchbook to display my work and have a more hands on approach with my work. However im greatful that i've learnt to use photoshop

Website Research

 

RANKIN WEBSITE

I really like the Rankin website as its very simple and minimalistic. I has all the options you'd need and it's totally user friendly with every option you could require to sucessfully browse his work. The homepage is very simple with a few main photographs which change to give you a further insight to his current or latest projects. Overall I'd say this is a sucessful website.

 

ELIE SAAB

Upon arival to the Elie Saab website you're greeted with a video of his latest fashion show and a handful of different options taking you to his online shop and "about" sections. This website is quite user friendly and easy to find what you're looking for. However i find that the video and the photo options on the side make the site far too busy for my taste.

 

Working on my final piece

Final Piece.

 

For my final piece i have chosen to use the theme of mermaids as i have always had a fascination with them. This is because i really love water and fish. When i was a child my dad took me to the aquarium and later on that night i had a dream that i was a mermaid and i've always remembered that dream. This is why i chose to use mermaids. Ive decided to make the mermaids into sirens to make the over all feel of the composition darker.

 

 

Outline

For the outline i scanned in a hand drawn drawing that i did.

Adding Images

to add an image you make the outline layer the only layer visable, you then use the wand tool to select your shape to fill. Once youve done that you can paste the image you indended to use and tidy up any over spill.

The other way...

For the right face i repeated the steps above but dragged that layer to the top of the layer control pannel so that it covers the line.

 

Tail

I used the same steps ad i did with the face, but this time i simply added a texture.

 

Finishing The Mermaid (and applying background)

After pasting in a scetch of hair that I found on the internet I used the eye dropper tool to select the perfect shade for the over all skin tone. Then i used the paintbucket tool to fill in the outline. Using the eraser tool with a lower opacity I blended the line between the colour of my mermaids skin and the texture of the tail. I then selected the outline of my mermaid, cut and pasted her onto a nice under water vista background.

Finishing With Photoshop

Once my mermaid illustration was complete i decided i no longer wanted to work within photoshop and took my work into the physical world. 

Tarot Piece

 

For my second outcome i was inspired by tarot cards as they are quite surreal in theme and in image. After flicking through my mothers dec of tarot cards at home i found my favourite card asthetically "The daughter of the lord of truth"and decided to re-create it in a fashion centred illustration.

 

After finding a picture in a magazine that i thought was apropriate to use i began to make my version of the card. I simplified it quite a lot but still used all of the themes i felt were important.

 

With this piece I wanted to keep it fairly similar to the tarot card but because of some of the asthetics of the photograph i cant make it identical. So far i am happy with my progress.

 

Upon final completion of my final piece i have realised that if my ability to edit were stronger my outcome would have been stronger visually. Regardless of this i am fairly happy with my effort for this brief and i definately developed my photoshop skills and my confidence on the software.

Colouring in illustrations

Mask

Duplicate background and name it drawing. Then select the multiply selection in the drop down menu in the layers box.

Using the quick selection tool select the areas you want to colour and add these into their own layer. I selected the cardigan and named the layer “Cardi”

Using the paintbrush tool I coloured the “cardi” layer in yellow. I then selected the “darken” option to bring forward the colour of the lines while also having the colour vibrant. I also played around with the opacity to create a colour I was happy with.

I then deselected the outline of the cardigan and began to select other areas I wanted to colour, my next selection was the hood of the cardi. After creating a new layer I painted the bottom of the hood blue. I played around with the opacity and the different options and found that I liked the effect  the disolve option gave.

I deselected the outline of the layer “Hood pt1” which I had just coloured in blue. I then created the layer “Hood pt.2” based on the selection of my desired area. I coloured that area in a soft purple and again played around with the options until I found one which I was happy with which was “multiply”

 I repeated these steps until I was entirely happy and began working on the dress, making it grey.
 

I repeated the process with the trousers making them a maroon colour.

Surrealism Research

SURREALISM IN ART AND FASHION

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali is one of the noutorious and best known Surrealists of History. He was born in Spain and after a traumatic upbringing he moved to paris to attend an art school where he met and recieved guidence from Pablo Picasso. Salvador Dali's work has been decipted to show parts of his past along with random and distorted objects. While I personally like the imagary of his work I find that it's quite random and because of this I struggle to see the point in his work and for me I dont particularly like this. I like to know what I'm seeing and why I'm seeing it and with Dali's work it makes me feel lost.

 Man Ray

Man Ray was an American visual artist who contributed to both the Dada movement and the Surrealist movement.   His work captures his version of what is surreal and what is beautiful. I don't like Man Ray's work as i feel like theres no point to it. It doesnt really seem to have a theme and they are just abstract objects with little meaning.

         

 

Viktor and Rolf

“It’s natural to look for ways to turn a show into something more of an experience” – Viktor and Rolf

Viktor and Rolf started working together in 1993 when they were studying in University in The Netherlands. They created their brand a few years later and began making ready to wear clothes in 2000 and couture garments even before that. It’s clear that Viktor and Rolf incorporate surrealist themes into their designs, this was especially clear in the S/S 2010 catwalk show when their models featured chiffon dresses resembling Edamame cheese and the skirts looking like they had been cut apart and stuck back on in the most abstract of ways. Also when looking at their couture show in A/W 2011 they feature outerwear which could easily be called outlandish and surreal. Their runway shows always look like they’ve either travelled from crazy dream or a haunting nightmare.  I personally really like their couture creations as they are completely unwearable and at the same time totally memorable.

Hussein Chalayan

 Hussein Chalayan is a Turkish fashion designer.  In … he and his family moved to England where he studied Fashion in Central Saint Martins. “His graduate collection in 1993, titled "The Tangent Flows", contained clothes which he had buried in a back yard and exhumed just before the show where they were presented with an accompanying text that explained the process. The ritual of burial and resurrection was said to give the garments a dimension that referenced to life, death, and urban decay.”  After this his career continued in the same surrealist style it began in. Since then he has gone on to create some of the most interesting ideas, for example his balloon dress and the table dress. I like the originality of his designs to an extent, I find that they are very random but not necessarily in a particularly good way, I feel as though the initial thought of the design didn’t have a lot of thought in them. Obviously I understand that the fundamentals of making a dress out of balloons and/or tables is a very difficult process I still feel like the initial idea wasn’t very much of a development of ideas.

Iris Van Herpen

Iris van herpen is a Dutch fashion designer. After interning with Alexander Mcqueen she realeased her own award winning fashion line. Her award winning haute couture pieces are highly based on surrealist themes. Her work displays an obvious curiousity with the world and different parts of nature and natural forms. Van Herpen uses a combination of old and forgotten techniques and new technologies to create her pieces which over all work well to create eye opening and unforgetable pieces of art. I personally really like Van Herpens work as I find it to be a combination of simple garments along with crazy avant garde themes which compliment the other perfectly.

 

COMPOSITION 1

RULE OF THIRDS//

Rule of thirds focuses on keeping the subject within the horizon line, this gives a different feel to the photo. for example in the first picture the horizon line is in theupper third which shows there's more detail below the horizon line, while the second picture the horizon line is on the lowere third which gives more of an open feel, the third picture shows the rule of thirds being used with a grid.

 

RULES OF EVEN AND ODD//

Rule of Odds is if you have an odd number of objects in an image it will be more interesting and therefore better to look at. If there is an even number of objects, the brain would have an easy time sorting the objects into pairs and therefore bringing in symmetry and dullness.

"The human eye tends to wander to the center of a group. With even number of objects, eye will end up at the negative space in center.
The rule becomes important when trying to achieve a visually pleasing composition of several objects. A common form of usage is having three objects in frame, they always form either a line or a triangle, both are considered pleasurable shapes."

RULE OF TRIANGLES//

The rule of triangles is more of an unspoken rule, naturally when you take a photo you tend to capture everything in the shape of a triangle because triangles are in everything you see. The triangle tends to make a more solid shape in a photograph.

 

RULE OF SPACE//

The rule of space is generally created so that if the subject is looking into "space" the picture should show the space that is being looked into. This makes the story within the photograph very clear and helps complete the image.

Photoshoot outcome

OUTCOME / EVALUATION

My photoshoot didnt go to plan at all despite changing the plan for the third time. I used myself for the model and did my own makup which was very simple and wore the iconic lolita glasses. My mum was taking the pictures and using a normal zoom as she hasnt got any camera skills. However due to natural lighting at this time of year being all wrong for an outdoor photo the results of the photo werent how i intended for them to be. After playing around on diferent editing softwares and photoshop for a while i reached the decision that my outcome wouldnt be how i wanted it to be. I am however happy with my research and the way i have presented all of my ideas.

 After cropping my picture I made some adjustments using the levels tool and playing with the brightness and colour presets, I added the original text from the 1997 movie poster.


 If I were to improve my photoshoot I would go outside during the middle of the day and have the perfect lighting. I'd have also liked to not have had to change my ideas so much as it wasted so much time that i could have spent editing the picture (with help).