I originally created this artwork when I was feeling upset and unwell, but had to go to school anyway. It was meant to represent how I felt having to get ready and dressed in order to appear “ok” when in reality I was having a bad day. From this original idea I began branching out into a more storytelling aspect with this. Maybe this person had recently died, but their death was seen as beautiful rather than tragic. Maybe this piece has some deeper connection to feeling out of place, or maybe even had a deeper meaning tied to wealth. In all honesty, although I started out with an initial idea, my piece eventually morphed into something that even I don’t know the interpretation of.
For this composition what I found most useful was the masking tool. Sometimes the selection tool, even the refined selection tool, didn’t give me exactly what I wanted. This is where the masking tool came in handy, as I could take away and put back parts of an image as I pleased. I could also make the image blend better into the piece. Overall I used the masking tool as the primary technique when it came to compositing my images.
In my opinion, Surreal Compositions are a lot more fun. Of course Realistic Compositions have their own place in the world, and can be useful when needing to put together family photos or creating a magazine ad. However Surreal Compositions come with a lot more freedom. It’s a lot more interesting to start off with a small initial idea and build upon it and grow it as much as you like, without necessarily having an end goal. Unlike Realistic Compositions, in Surreal Compositions I focused more on just making what I liked, something that had all my favorite colors and looked pretty and elegant towards the end. In general I enjoyed the artistic freedom I got with Surreal Composition over the practicality of Realistic Composition.
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