For this exercise I chose a photograph from a music magazine. It is of a DJ performing in a converted church – I was draw to this image as I thought that when using a viewfinder it presented as a really separate image. From the DJs face, to the different elements in the church window.

I also thought that the lighting was very interesting – there wasn’t much colour besides in the detail of the church window and the red lights. The contrast of the light and dark on the DJs face was very bold in comparison to the lights and the church window. I think the colour red created such a bold contrast between that and the church environment.

Rather than using photocopies I photographed each image as I have been having trouble with my printer and can not get it fixed due to the lockdown! This way still worked well and allowed me to zoom in and see the different sections of the image regardless.

I ended up choosing the word ‘calm’ and the picture of the woman’s face. Because of how it was cropped you can not see that she is a dj anymore – you can really only see her facial expression. At first I thought that she looked focused or serious in this crop but when I looked longer I noticed that she does look calm – almost serene. I made some sketches based off this image. I decided to change her face from red to blue – as blue is a colour that represents calmness where are red looks more severe.

After the artist research I did in part two I have been wanting to use aspects of collage more in my work – I cut out some flowers from fashion magazines to use a long side the final illustration and I also found a large image of a flower to use as the background. I thought flowers would go a long well with the theme of ‘calm’. I chose photographs that had quite muted tones as I thought it would work well with the blue – I didn’t want to use anything to bold.

I drew the image again on an A4 sheet – shading her in blue and black pencil crayons. The drawing is not an exact copy of the original, but the inspiration is based on it. I cut out the illustration and place it on a larger piece of paper to start on the collage element of the piece. I moved the flowers around a few times before I decided where to put them, I hadn’t planned this aspect out too much as I wanted the freedom to experiment. I did know that I wanted to place one of the flowers in her hair. After placing the flowers and sticking them down I scanned in the illustration and put it into procreate ready to add the text.
I tested out a couple of different fonts, mainly cursive ones in blue to keep with the theme. After settling on one I was happy with I wanted to use some of the colours from the initial illustration/collage to tie it all together. I used the same pink as the flowers to highlight the text and draw some further details on her face.

I am happy with the overall finished piece – I just hope it meets the brief because it definitely strayed quite far from the original picture that I was working on! I do like the collage element and would like to experiment more with this in the future. I do however think that the text could tie into the over all piece a little better – I did toy around with the idea of using magazine cut outs to spell the words and fit in with the collage aspect but I felt that the text I used better fit the brief.