Conceptual

Introduction

For this project, I was forced out of my comfort zone and encouraged to take risks which helped me find and express my creative vision. Starting with English, I pushed myself to become a better reader and writer through analyzing works by different authors to writing some of my own work. In Digital Media, I was challenged to produce my own website featuring weekly photo blogs that have encouraged us to share our creativity, and have become familiar with a variety of Adobe applications.

Haiku

Our first project of the year was to write a haiku. In English, I was given a random concept statement which was “I am exploring the feeling of jealousy through walking away from a responsibility.” Through the constraint of the 5-7-5 syllable structure of a haiku, I was able to describe the ‘feeling’ and ‘experience’ from my concept statement in my poem. Once I had written my poem, we produced an audio recording in Digital Media using Pro Tools to add background music and Premiere Pro which added an animated video to our poetry audio and image.

This image shows my Premiere Pro interface for my visual and audio for my photo haiku.
Editing in Premiere Pro

This project taught me how to portray concepts through artistic composition and challenged me to think outside of the box. In the beginning, I struggled to find the right flow of my poem but once I started brainstorming, I found the right words to include. Using Premiere Pro for the first time was difficult to get used to since I was used to using iMovie in the past. This project only featured a fraction of the tools that Premiere Pro has to offer. We mainly used it to animate our text and add our audio to play behind our chosen picture. I have valued the challenges I faced in Premiere Pro because it has taught me to be patient and meticulous with all the fine editing that went into producing this fairly simple video. I enjoyed putting this video together and I am proud of how the final product turned out.

Poetry

In the poetry unit, we wrote three different poems: an Ekphrastic poem, a Free Verse poem, and a Haiku, which you saw above. We read works from different authors and analyzed their writing style to inspire our writing. Our main project for this unit was to write a Free Verse or Ekphrastic poem. In Digital Media we used Photoshop to artistically arrange our photo and poem.

Zephyr, a free verse poem written by Anjali Kamran
click on image to see poem
Listen to my Free Verse Intention Statement

Zephyr is a free verse ekphrastic poem written in response to Banksy’s street art, “Girl with Balloon.” Throughout my poem I tell a story of the little girl and her balloon of hope. In the first stanza, I personify the wind to represent the unrelenting adversity that the little girl is facing. In this story, the wind is the antagonist as it tries to separate the little girl from her balloon. In the second stanza, I compare the heart-shaped balloon to the little girl’s actual heart to show how hope is always within herself. The balloon represents hope in this image as the little girl reaches out to grab it from the unforgiving wind. In the third stanza, I use imagery to communicate the little girl’s emotions to the audience. The once hopeful little girl has become frightened of what the wind might do to her balloon. In the fourth stanza, I use repetition to represent the hope that the little girl is clinging on to. Lastly, I personify the wind in the fifth stanza to represent how the little girl’s hope helped her conquer the monstrous wind, and thus the adversity that she is facing. Ultimately, the pattern of imagery throughout this poem depicts how hope aids the little girl in overcoming the adversity that was portrayed as the wind. In class, we were given the opportunity to receive feedback from our peers to further our ideas. During my peer review, my classmates enjoyed the last line, “As the wind whispered ‘goodbye.’”, but suggested that at the beginning of the poem I include more descriptive words that illustrate the wind as a monster. The most helpful feedback I received focused on connecting how hope was able to get the little girl through the taunting of the wind. Instead of “the wind tiptoeing towards her,” I changed it to “the wind lurking towards her.” Just by changing a few words, it became clear that the wind is the monster of the poem. I was particularly inspired by Amanda Lovelaces’ “the princess saves herself in this one” because I was intrigued by how she was able to include a deeper meaning between the lines.

This is an image of my Pro Tools interface for my audio recording including some background music to play behind my voice recording.
Editing in Pro Tools
This is an image of my Photoshop interface for my visual representation of my poetry.
Editing in Photoshop

This project allowed me to work with various formats and mediums, including text, images, audio, and video. In Pro Tools, I took the voice recording of my poem and added music in the background and add sound effects to express the emotions expressed in my poem. We then used Photoshop to artistically layout our poem and included an image to go with it. Overall, I am pleased with how this production turned out and I value being able to incorporate the skills I learned when working with these mediums into this project.

Elements & Principles of Art

In Digital Media and Design, we were introduced to the Elements & Principles of Art, techniques that are incorporated to exemplify your artwork. Putting together this slideshow helped us see how different types of art all incorporate the Elements & Principles of Art in their work.

Elements and Principles of Art Title Page

Design

In this unit we explored different conceptual pieces of art and created our own. Our main project was the Conceptual photo, where we took our same concept statement from English and represented all of the components in a photo. We were taught how to use Photoshop and edit our pictures professionally. In addition to Photoshop, we were introduced to color theory. This year, our class consists of only 6 girls and because it’s so small we have built close relationships with one another. I value this a lot because we are there to support each other when they need help.

Macro Photo

One of our first projects in Design was learning how to take pictures with our Macro camera lens, which is mainly used for close-up photography. We then took our chosen photo and learned how to edit it in Photoshop.

This is an image of a Marigold
Marigold
Photoshop interface of editing the Marigold picture
Editing in Photoshop

In the Photoshop interface, I added multiple layers to my image to make the colors of the Marigold stand out. This process took a lot of guess and check as I tried to figure out how drastic the effects of things like hue/saturation, brightness/contrast would do to my image.

Conceptual Photo & Artist Statement

The Conceptual Photo was our main assignment in Design to show our understanding of concepts we were taught throughout the unit. Taking our concept statement from English, we represented it in our image. We took a photo of two objects, one representing the feeling and the other the experience. We then sketched out different angles we were going to take the picture from as well as what type of lighting we wanted. Part of the process was to create a contact sheet that included all of our possible Conceptual pictures. To support our photo we wrote an artist statement, where we explained our image and our thought/editing process behind it.

Contact Sheet for Conceptual Photo
Contact Sheet
Photoshop Interface of Conceptual Photo
Photoshop Interface
Final product of Conceptual Photo.
Final Conceptual Photo

I am exploring the feeling of jealousy through walking away from a responsibility.

In this image, the broken necklace wrapped around a slat of the empty park bench represents how the brokenness and emptiness that you feel correlates with each other. Taking the picture at an upward angle and zooming in increased the depth of field to remove the excess space; thus encapsulating the self-centeredness that comes along with jealousy. I chose to shoot with a high aperture and a high shutter speed to create a low lighting to portray a wistful feeling.

The broken necklace shows how jealousy leaves you broken and frustrated. The park bench has nothing else on it to represent the emptiness that comes with walking away from a responsibility. Looking at this image, the feeling of loneliness is illustrated through jealousy and walking away from a responsibility.

In Photoshop, we developed different techniques to enhance our photos. We learned how to crop our image to fit the rule of thirds, increase the vibrancy, add highlights and shadows, increase or decrease hue and saturation levels, and apply vignettes to our edited image. I wanted my photo to be gloomy to further demonstrate my Concept statement. I began by cropping the image so that the pendant was in the upper left third. Next, I added curves which increased the shadows and highlights in the image. Then, I increased the vibrancy to make the color of the park bench richer. Lastly, I added a vignette to emphasize the melancholiness that was portrayed in the image.

Negative Positive Space Halloween Project

This project was a fun way to get in the Halloween spirit this year and a chance to Design using pen and paper. We originally started with 2 pieces of different colored papers and sketched our ideas on one side and used an X-Acto knife to replicate it on the other side, keeping the symmetry down the middle.

Negative Positive Halloween Project
Negative Positive Halloween Project

Interior Linear Perspective of Bedroom

In this project, we focused on learning Linear Perspective (1 point and 2 point), to recreate our bedroom. With all Linear Perspective drawings, all the elements connected to the vanishing point, as you’ll see with this recreation of my bedroom. With this project, we were introduced to Adobe Illustrator where we digitally created our designs.

Adobe Illustrator interface of Linear Perspective of Bedroom.
Editing in Illustrator
Final Linear Perspective of Bedroom.
Final Linear Perspective of Bedroom