BASQUIAT ARTIST STATEMENT

Basquiat Artist Statement 

The term I chose to focus on in this piece is "Tension" . I displayed the use of tension with the lines scribbled along the crouching person's shoulders and leading to the butterfly, making the work seem chaotic and almost uncomfortable, while still leading your eyes easily. I feel there is also tension in the use of negative space. 

Concept: The assignment was to choose a social issue we felt passionately about, I chose domestic violence.

The scribbled lines in place of the head of the crouching person communicate the feelings a victim of domestic violence may experience: chaotic and helpless. The lines leading to the butterfly obviously symbolize the fact that the butterfly seems to be (if indirectly) causing the conflict. 

I chose the butterfly as the antagonist of my piece for two reasons; The purple butterfly is the symbol/logo of many organizations against domestic violence/helping domestic violence victims: in this case, these organizations can often cause more harm to a victim than good, making them feel obligated to get this help and adding stress to their lives. I also used the butterfly as a sense of irony because of the stereotype that butterflies are gentle and fragile creatures, and domestic violence is, by definition: "violent or aggressive behavior within the home, typically involving the violent abuse of a spouse or partner." Similarly to the butterfly, people would assume in a domestic relationship, the two would treat each other with kindness and gentle behaviour, when in reality they are the main abuser in the victim's life. 

I chose a plain white background because much of the time, for victims of abuse, the abusive aspect of their life seems to take control of it, and everything else is just white noise and exhaustion, this is the same for the replacement of the head, the troubles in their life seem to become the only thing they can focus on. The crouching person (victim) is genderless because despite the fact that the majority of abused victims are women, people of all genders can fall victim to an abusive family member or partner. 

Culminating Artist Statement

For my culminating project I chose to film myself taking a bike ride around the time the sun sets, as biking is something I really enjoy doing and I find sunsets fascinating and beautiful.
A lot of the shots I took are of the journey through streets and tree-surrounded paths, along with the sun shining on the trees and lake.
Mainly what I was trying to portray in my project was the importance of freedom in my life and the fact that I pride myself in finding beauty in the life I surround myself in and I portrayed this message with the trees speeding by and the bike as something I use to feel freedom.
The song I chose was "Holocene" by Bon Iver. I chose this song for my project because I believe the music suits the shots I took as it is calming and pretty. I also really enjoy the lyrics that play in the last few seconds of my video: "and at once I knew, I was not magnificent" because I think it is very true that no one is truly significant in this world as we will all be forgotten one day, so we may as well do all we can to enjoy what little time we have.


(my finished video is in the drop folder under my name as "my finished project" because I couldn't figure out how to rename it ;___;)

10 Best Photos

Kinetic Typography

My typography video is called "Scars/to the new boyfriend" which is the name of the original video that the audio is taken from, a poem by slam poet Rudy Francisco.

To create it I used Flash CS6. My motion typography contains most of the principles of animation including squash and stretch, timing, exaggeration, and appeal.

What I most enjoy about my final product is the use of space and the speed (how well it matches the audio) I'm also quite proud of the colours I chose. On reflection I would probably change some of the parts in which I didn't add anything really exciting to catch the viewers attention and simply had the words dead centre.
I faced quite a few challenges with the design as I had many ideas for the typography which I thought would look really good but I couldn't figure out how to make them work as I had just started using flash for typography. To solve most of these problems I watched a few tutorials on how to use flash for motion Typography (there weren't many).

10 Best Photos - Sydney and Kira

Illustrator Drawing

1) I chose GIF because I had less than 256 colours and the GIF format copies the file exactly if this is the case and offers a "rich, true colour image". http://users.wfu.edu/matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html

2) For my procedure i began by tracing the body of the kitten with the pen tool. I then broke it off into a few different pieces and filled them in with the colours i found to be appropriate. for the smaller details i used the pencil tool.

3) When I thought i was just about finished i realized the face of the cat looked slightly squashed and that it didn't match the shape of the original image, but i soon realized that all i had to do to fix it was to adjust the size and shape of the image using the selection tool.

4) If I'm being honest, i'm not very pleased with my final result. I realize there were lots of things i could've done to make it look more similar to the original image but sadly i am not very good with illustrator. though I am learning.

Pixel Portrait

PNG

GIF

1) The GIF is sharper while the PNG is more blended and smooth

2) The characteristic I focused on was my hair because of all the different shades of red and orange found in the original photo

3) I brought a photo in on another layer and drew on top of it using the pencil tool