Composite Photo Critique

     This composite photo is called "Rainbow", and was made by Karin Kuhlmann in 1996.This painting won "winner of the month" in the Corel World Design Contest in 1996.  She went to school for photography, and graphic design and then worked as a commercial artist for over 25 years. She later started making graphic work for herself, and is quite successful.

     To make this picture, I think that Karin took four separate photos and put them over top of a background with a frame. She took photos of a building with water in front of it, a puddle of water with a ripple in it, a rainbow, and the sky. I think that these photos are separate because the clouds in the sky look very zoomed in, and too close to the building to be real, a big body of water generally doesn't have that large of a ripple in it, and rainbows don't look as perfect as the one in this photo.

     To make the water look how it does, I think she placed the photo of rippled water over top of the real water with building photo, used a clone stamp to get the reflections of the trees and building in the water, and then used a gradient with a lowered opacity for the colour.

     For the outside of the photo, I think that Karin simply used a gradient background, a frame, and made bubbles by using stamps of 3-D like circles with colours that matched the ones used inside the framed picture.

     I think that the result is very pleasing. It has depth, lots of things to look at, and uses analogous colours, for the most part so they look very well together.
   

Digital Paintings & Abstract Art

"Fireworks"

     This is my digital abstract photo. I was inspired to make this after watching a tutorial about how to create digital abstract art on photoshop. The stamp that I used for this image reminded me of fireworks, and celebrations on Canada Day, so that is why I named it "Fireworks". Although the firework on the left is larger, my focal point is the smaller firework on the right because it is much brighter, and pops out more, in my opinion.


     This is my digital painting overlay. I chose to paint an overlay on a photo of a runner because I love running. I gave it the title "Free Run" because the gradient that I used makes it look like the runner is running from something that is kind of dark, and heavy, and into something happy and free. The other reason I gave it this name was because of the Nike shoes that she is wearing. They are called "Nike Free Runs", and I thought that it would be a nice pun. Overall, I really like how it turned out, and it is my favourite piece that I created for this project.

"Free Run"




This is my optional photo, and I chose to make another photo overlay, but this time I made a cat because I thought it would be a challenge, and it was because of the detail. I used the bright orange gradient as a background because I thought the picture needed a pop of brightness, and when I tried using the cat's eye colour as a gradient, it didn't do much for the picture. I named this photo "Found the Yarn" because the eyes of the cat look like they are very focused on something of interest, which could quite possibly be a treat, or a toy, like a ball of yarn. 

"Found the Yarn"

Poetry Anthology Cover

 

     This is my design for the Lourdes Poetry Anthology book cover. I decided to have a spring theme and used many flowers, with a multi-coloured eye inside a multi-coloured flower in the center as a focal point. 

     

     I chose to do a spring theme because spring makes me feel happy, and I like the bright colours. Also, to connect with poetry, I placed a multi-coloured eye in the center of the focal point flower. It is there to represent that everyone sees things differently, and everyone has their own unique way to express their thoughts, and emotions.

Guelph Multicultural Festival Poster

     This is my poster for the Guelph Multicultural festival. To make this, I used a large Canadian flag as the background, and added many flags individually from various countries around the world to the red sides, and maple leaf in the center.

     I chose to do this theme and design to show that all of the countries are living together as one. I also specifically chose to put the other countries' flags on top of the Canadian flag because this multicultural festival is in Guelph, and celebrates the diversity of people in Canada. I tried to fit as many flags from around the world as I could and fit a total of 81 flags into the Canadian flag.

Spring Mobile - Group Project

    This is my group's mobile. I worked with Kara, Katie, and Shaila. Our work is inspired by Alexander Calder's kinetic sculptures.

     We chose to make a mobile sculpture from a purple hoola hoop, scrapbooking paper and construction paper. The theme of our mobile is spring and we made flowers from paper, using analogous colours, pink and purple. To make these flowers, we drew, cut out, and folded various sizes of circles. For the flowers to each be unique, we used both normal scissors and scissors that cut with different designs on them such as; jagged lines and wavy lines. In addition to funky scissors, we also used gold glitter on some of the flowers (that did not have a pattern) to make them look better, and not so plain.

     Our next step with the flowers was to put them on strings so we could hang them. To make sure that the flowers stayed in place, we hot glued each one of them to their string. From there, we then hung each string of flowers on  the hoola hoop, in a way that it stayed balanced, for example,by hanging four of the longer, heavier strings at four opposite bends on the hoop.

     When we finished this, we thought we were done, but we forgot about a focal point, so that is what we made next. To make our focal point, we cut different sizes of circles and folded them like our analogous flowers, but instead of those colours, we used shiny gold paper, to complement with the gold glitter that is on some of the pink and purple flowers. We then hung this string of flowers in the middle of the hoola hoop to finish our mobile. Overall, I enjoyed working in a group. We all had similar ideas that were incorporated, and everyone helped with everything that needed to be completed.