Piece #6

For my sixth concentration piece I wanted to focus on the violence in the media. My idea was to portray all the different ways consumers view violence in their daily lives and show that influence on an observer. I incorporated images of war, violence, domestic violence in pop culture, and violence depicted in music in the background and worked a graphite and charcoal portrait on top of that. I am happy with this composition because I think it is very engaging and the rhythm of it leads the eye around the whole picture plane. I also think there is nice contrast in this piece through warm and cool colors and also between black and white and the vibrant colors. Overall I am happy with this piece and excited that my concentration is half-way done at this point.

Piece #5

This week I decided to focus on the influence of the media through television. I wanted to portray the dominance of advertisements on television and how they make watching TV merely an exposure to advertisements rather than a form of entertainment. I originally began with a repetition of televisions CitraSolv-ed and then I added in images of product advertisements behind the televisions. When I completed this the advertisements were over-powering the images of the televisions. After the critique I was advised to either add another layer of a specific subject on top of the collage or reconfigure the collage in an interesting way. I decided to cut the collage into strips and create another structure in between the strips of the collage. I chose an image of a girl hiding her face with a newspaper draped over her head. I thought this image was evocative because she is hiding from the abundance of media exposre. I repeated this image to balance out the repetition of advertisements. I am much happier with the work as a final product than I was with just the collage I began with. I like the way I incorporated design structures to create repetition, rhythm, and balance in the work.

Piece #4

For my fourth concentration piece I continued my investigation of how the media affects' society by looking at the way smoking is presented to the public. I began by looking for images in advertisements, etc. and found two strong images of provocative women smoking cigarettes. I thought these two images represented the objectivity of women through the advertisement of smoking very well. I CitraSolv-ed these two images as the first layer of my piece and then found a few more images of old-fashioned advertisements to contrast the new, updated images. Lastly, I included a picture of modern day teenage girls to show the legacy of the way smoking is advertised to women. After finding images I began layers on watercolor pencil, pastels, and charcoal to create a background of smoke clouds. I wanted the mass of clouds to make the viewer question the messages they were being sent about smoking. During critique I was advised to increase the contrast in the values of the piece for more eye catching qualities. I was also told to work on the design structure in the background so that the viewer's eye was led around the work in a purposeful way. From those suggestions I added more media to increase contrast and tried to make the desing in the background more radial. In all, I like that this piece is provocative and grabs the viewers attention through the use of line, shape, value, movement, and rhythm.