Photoshop Art

In Digital Media, we learned how to use Photoshop to create artwork. We learned digital painting, compositing photos together, and even making 360 art. Throughout this process, I was able to learn how to recreate traditional art though an online medium. I was also able to further develop my skills as an artist and find my voice through visual art.

Artist Statement

For this project, I drew one of the final scenes of the show The Legend of Korra. The city is in ruins after the final battle, but the yellow beam, a new spirit portal, stands as a beacon of hope. I had a lot of trouble getting the sky right. It was supposed to be a blend of blues, purples, whites and yellows to create a dark, yet beautiful sky but I couldn’t get it right. I tried to replicate it exactly like the original and failed every time. I eventually went for a different approach of adding a base layer of purple and adding lighter layers above it to reach my end result. The sky actually ended up being one of the things I’m most proud of in this piece because I liked how I was able to look at it from a different angle and have my own approach. It’s exactly what this piece represents: new opportunities in times of failure.

Multi-Layered Art Project

For this project, we had the choice of making a layered art scene in the form of a light box, stacked wood art, or wood rings. I opted to make a light box featuring a scene from Avatar: The Last Airbender for my project. I started off by making a rough sketch on paper of what I wanted it to look like. Then, I went into Illustrator to start the digital design. After making 9 different layers that hurt my brain trying to visualize, I had my design cut out with our laser cutter on 9 different pieces of cardstock. I then took those pieces of cardstock and stuck them to foam frames inside a wooden frame to make my lightbox. After putting the physical layers and configuring LED light strips to the back, my light box was done.

Artist Statement

For my light box I decided to make it based on a scene from the show Avatar: The Last Airbender. This scene, the agni kai between the characters Zuko and Azula, has always been one of my favorite scenes of the entire show. It’s the conclusion to a whole show’s worth of character development and it is also one of the most visually stunning scenes in the show that I figured could translate to a light box really well. I initially had a lot of trouble when making the digital layers for this project because I had a hard time conceptualizing how it the layers would be cut and be translated into a tangible object. But after taking on the project one layer at a time, I was able to finish my design and make it into a physical, completed light box.