Bloom: A Junior Experimental Project by Drew Russert (2013)

My art is composed of a hand-drawn flower, a woman stick figure, and an image of a helicopter. Those images combined represent one’s lack of confidence to approach a subject with ease. In this case, the metaphors tell a story of how a boy wants to get to know a girl and start a relationship with her. However, the boy doesn’t know how to properly approach women and gets scared when attempting to do so. The flower represents the boy, hiding behind the shadows despite the beauty he has to show. The stick figure woman represents the girl, who displays innocence. The helicopter is related to the relationship he has with his parents. The boy feels like his parents are always ''hovering'' over him and constantly intruding into his business. The boy hates it, even though his parents love and care for him so much.

In order to create this art, I used Adobe Photoshop. Originally, I was going to use Illustrator, but in the situation I was in, Photoshop was easier to use. Both the stick figure and the flower were created with the paintbrush tool. I was going to find a photo of a flower to place, but it was too complicated to crop it, and I figured that I could create a better flower with the paintbrush. The helicopter was found off google images, and I was able to easily crop it.