DUE: 05/07/13
For my final project I want to do a series of digital photographs. I want to use people as my subject and draw different patterns on their faces. My intent is to take these photographs with a white or black background and give a professional look to them, almost as if they could possibly be found in a fashion magazine. I then will be putting these photographs into photoshop to boost colors and contrast where I feel is needed.
RESEARCH:
Since I want to be drawing on people and then taking photographs of them, I found an interesting artist, Alexa Meade, who does paintings on people to make it seem as though it is a paining on a canvas, when in fact it is actually a person that is the canvas. I would like to do my research portion of this final project on this artist. I feel as though, although we are not going to be doing the exact same thing, we have similar aspects, like drawing on people, that are the same. I feel like she is an interesting artist that I am eager to find more information about.
ALEXA MEADE:
Alexa Meade is a young artist that makes artwork that lies at the intersection of painting, photography, performance, and installation. Instead of doing the traditional representational paintings on canvas, she creates her paintings directly on top of the physical subjects that she is referencing. After painting her subjects, she photographs them. The representational painting and the subjects being referenced appear to be the same as the three-dimensional space of her painted scene, which end up becoming optically compressed into a two-dimensional space. Ultimately, she makes three-dimensional living things in our world look as if they are just two-dimensional paintings and nowhere near a real life image. Meade gets live models to help her with her paintings. She paints layers upon layers on the models with acrylic paint. She paints the surfaces of the human subjects, foreground, and background into one continuous plane.
PRODUCTION LOG:
My final project centered around the medium of digital photography. To begin my project I had to find volunteers to be my models that would allow me to draw on their face, as well as photograph them. I was able to get three friends to be my models for this project, Kayla, Jess, and Zana. Each girl allowed me to draw on them whatever pattern I wanted and were overall great models.
To begin, I found a light grey sheet in my house and hung it in my basement. I wanted a light, neutral color in the background to allow great amounts of contrast and shadows to show up in my photos. I then found a clip light that I shined on different parts of the girls while photographing them. The light allowed me to direct where I wanted my lights and darks in the pictures and helped me enhance the contrast for the photographs. In some pictures, I also had a fan going. I included a fan in some parts of the photoshoot to have the model's hair have movement and not just look boring by sitting in the same position in each picture. In order to have the light, fan, and camera going all at once I whatever models were not being photographed help me with the fan and the light. I directed them what to do, as well as sometimes stopped photographing and moved the light exactly where I wanted it, as well as the people too. The models not only helped me by posing but also with the production of the photoshoot, which was a super big help.
Originally I was planning on painting each girls faces the patterns. After a lot of thought and listening to what some of the girls are allergic to, I realized using actual paint was not a great idea do to the fact that some of the girls may break out in hives. I then decided to try washable face paint, since it is intended to be on a persons face, however, it did not go onto each girls face how I wanted it to look. I then resorted to using mainly red lipstick for each model. The lipstick did exactly what I wanted and was easy to apply to each person's face.
These are some of the many original photos (almost 300) that were taken from the photoshoot before edited:
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| Original Photo |
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| Original Photo |
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| Original Photo |
After taking all the photos I then had to do the tough part of narrowing down the photos I felt were best for my project and which did not go. Also, do to the fact that 300 photographs is a lot, I had to narrow down the pictures because of this too. I then made separate folders on my computer to organize the photos by who they were taken of. This was a major help with staying organized, otherwise when printing the photos, it would be hard to keep them in proper stacks and in a specific order.
I put each photo into photoshop in order to create the look and feel I wanted for this photo shoot series. I played with the contrast, brightness, vibrance, levels, and color balance. I spent most of my time on the color balance aspect in photoshop. I wanted to give each picture either a blue/violet feel to it or a blue/turquoise look. I made sure to make the contrast an important aspect also when editing these photographs. I always love how high contrasted pictures look and feel that by having high amounts of contrast it adds more interest and eye appeal to photographs, than subtle contrast differences.
These are some out of the 184 photos that were narrowed down to my final photographs that were used in my final series:
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| Original Version Can Be Seen Above |
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| My Favorite Picture In The Entire Series |
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| Original Version Can Be Seen Above |
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After I was finished taking the photos of each of my models, my friends thought it would be fun if they were to take similar photos of me, the artist, so I can too have photos like them. I allowed them to make whatever pattern they wanted on my face and had them play one of my favorite songs while they photographed me so I would be dancing and have a less serious mood then I had them do in their photographs. I then edited the pictures of myself and made them black and white to differentiate them from my series of photographs. I also wanted the book to show at the end who the artist was and make who I am different from who they were:
After I was finished editing the photos I decided I wanted to display my series in a photo album so people are able to flip through the book to easily see all the photograph at once. I printed each photo out on matte photo paper, which made the photos look better than I thought they were going to look when printed out. I then narrowed down my final photos and placed the photos in specific orders. Each page has certain photos on it based on what I felt looked best with each other. Some photos have similar looks than others so I wanted to keep similar feels together, rather than make the pages random. These are some photos with how the final album looks:
SELF EVALUATION
I thought this final project was a lot of fun. I was very happy and appreciative that I was able to find three great models to help me out with this assignment. I was afraid at first that I was not going to find volunteers because I would have to paint their faces and most people are turned off by that, however, I am so grateful that these three allowed me to do this. While taking the photos the only thing I thought was challenging was getting all three girls to focus and stop fooling around. Due to the fact that we were all friends, at certain times it was hard to get each one to pay their full attention and be serious without laughing. Overall, I thought each girl did listen to my directions well and that I was able to get really great photos from the shoot.
My favorite part of the project was editing the photographs. Although it took a very long time to do, I thought I did a really good job with the editing. Although I am not sure if they can be put in a fashion magazine like I originally wanted to aim the look of these photos to be, I think they still look professionally done. The only aspect during the editing process that I think I had a bit of trouble with was staying on one direction with the tones of colors. Some of my photos have a blue/violet tone to them, while others have a blue/turquoise tone.
If I could do anything to continue this project further than I would make a series in black and white. I loved how the photographs of myself came out in black and white and I think it would have been awesome to make a second album with the colored photos in black and white. Each photo had great amounts of contrast which would make for a really interesting black and white composition photograph.
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