Road to Redemption
Project 6
INQUIRY: In what ways are humans impacting the environment?
Size: 37.9(w) x 28.4(h) inches
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Date of Completion: Dec 10th, 2021
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Ideas: indicate self reflection to demonstrate possibility of reducing global temperature
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Materials: Made with pencil, mixer brush, and charcoal; iPhone for photography; used Adobe Fresco on iPad
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Process: uses leading lines for movement to emphasize exhaust pipe and real images in background for contrast
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Inspiration
Convex Mirror Art
What is a convex mirror? They are curved mirrors often seen in parking garages or street corners for cars to view blind spots. People also use it for decoration in houses since they provide a fun alternative to normal mirrors.
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The concept of using convex mirrors in a piece of artwork was first introduced to me in Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. Though it was small, the distorted reflection and the intricate details were enough to catch my attention. It was honestly impressive how the artist made it so accurately, even including himself in the painting.
"All-Stars"
Trying to find more pieces that utilize this concept, I found "Hero's Mirror" and "Amnon David Ar's Self Portrait" which have a more distorted effect due to the angle and distance it was placed in. What I mainly wanted to
take inspiration from was not the painting themselves, but the way in which things are reflected. These mirrors are almost identical to fish eye lens which makes the subject, or object in the middle appear close, but those off to the sides smaller.
"Arnolfini Portrait"
"Hero's Mirror"
"Amnon David Ar's Self Portrait"
The
Planning
I was in a bit of a stump for my sixth project since much of my ideas have already been done, so I started off sketching possible pieces without a specific theme in mind. For example, I thought about deforestation and how cutting down trees reminded me of shaving so I drew it. However, there was no connection between the two other than the looks so I scratched that idea. I also thought about doing a mix of photography and digital manipulation in which I would make a collage out of different buildings I photograph to talk about urbanization.
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With the influence of my third sketch, which is a scene of a person walking in a run down city, I decided to talk on the issue of private transportation, specifically car pollution. I wanted to convey a scene showing this problem resulting in the image on the top left. Seeing that my idea was a low hanging fruit, I asked myself "How can I make this more metaphorical?" That was when a convex mirror came into mind. Instead of showing the smoke from the exhaust through the rear, what if I show it from the reflection? The smoking passenger can also use it to reflect on his actions.
With this idea, I made the sketch on the right where the passenger is now looking back into the mirror instead of looking forward. The facial features and making him pause his smoking session also shows that the process of reflecting on his actions have already started.
The
Experimentation
As my sixth project nears completion, I had to find a charcoal brush to capture the smoke busting out the car exhaust. I tested out two promising brushes: charcoal pencil and its variant in order to see which is more accurate. Setting their flow and smoothing at different values, I did quick strokes to get the feel of it and tried to illustrate a cloud of smoke. Against the white background, the charcoal pencil with flow 1 and smoothing at 100 came out superior due to its balanced mixture of black and grey.
With this I did some more practice with the brush including the variant and tried testing it against a red background since that was going to be the color in the original piece. However, I realized that they did not translate well into the bright red without the presence of white. A darker black seems to be more elicit against the background so I adjusted the flow of the charcoal pencil to 20.
The
Process
At first I planned to have the background be an urban environment made out of buildings that I have photographed, but it didn't really contribute to the message I want to convey. My main message with this piece was recognizing the issue (air pollution), or self reflecting is the first step to making change which is indicated with the colors on the road. It starts off with bright red meant to represent the dangerous level of global temperature and how once the problem is recognized, the danger level slowly decreases with orange to yellow and then eventually green where things back in the safe zone and thriving more than ever.
The emotions of the subject in a way reflects myself when I started becoming more self conscious in my actions that affect the environment. It was after that that I try to reduce my carbon footprint, but this decision has yet to be made by the person in the image since he has only acknowledge the issue. I decided to make a contrast between drawings and real life in this piece to show that the image seen in the convex mirror isn't a reality as of yet, but a possible path. The background is in fact two images that I combined together where one was a picture of a gathering and another was a sunset. I added these two photos into the last layer and erased any fragments that interfered with the art inside the mirror. I then had to darken or lower the brightness of my grass since it didn't fit the low lighting of the sunset.
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The
Reflection
Honestly speaking, this piece is one of my weakest and was the result of a creative block. I believe that the idea was there, but the execution could've been way better if it wasn't for my lack of creativity. Regardless of this obstacle, I still had fun working on this piece especially sketching the passenger and coloring the road with gradual changes in hue. My least favorite part was having to do this digitally since I initially planned to use traditional medium, but fearing that using charcoal might ruin my piece, I decided to go with the safer option. Several lessons I learned from this project and plan to do in the future is to always be on the look out for inspirations and to sketch daily. This way, I am always working myself creatively.