Month: January 2021

My poster which is a hypothetical art exhibition titled “dreamlike” I feel really encapsulates the word “dream,” we dream with our brains, our dreams are wacky and fun. My overriding theme was surrealism and I was inspired by surrealist artwork to make my poster feel out of this world and not ordinary. I  feel achieved this by ensuring every element of my poster was something you had to think about in order to discover it’s meaning, I wanted there to be several elements which tied in together so that you can come up with almost any meaning as there is endless possibilities. The brain itself is a solar system of thoughts and the thoughts are shown as planets, the technicality of the human brain which allows us to dream and come up with such wacky ideas to create surrealism is shown through the use of a spiders web because when I think of a brain I often think of a web which all links and works together in order to come up with an idea. I want my poster to be striking on the page and to look like something no one’s ever seen because that is what surrealism is, you are stepping out of the ordinary and mundane into something new, exciting and unreal. There is a mix of nature and the nature we are completely alien to which is our solar system, despite it being real it feels especially surreal to us because it is so hard to comprehend I like to view it as almost a dream as we still don’t fully understand how our own minds work so we could be dreaming most of our ideas.

Photography started in the middle of the 19^th century beginning with the Daguerreotype, 1837 by Louis Daguerre. These photographic images at the time where seen as magical and was only really accessible to the rich. After time there was over 3,000,000 by 1853 after its popularity grew. The long exposure times resulted in them being unable to be reproduced and where one off. Overtime Daguerreotypes where replaced by wet plate glass negatives which had negative images which where contact printed. As photography continued to progress cameras became better and better finally resulting in depth of field, this helps make the images look less flat and can single out a specific subject more easily than before. Different lenses are then introduced which help quality in images and can create different effects visually. For a conceptual design I photographed an orange and a wine glass and put them together with adobe illustrator. In order to do this, I removed the background of the wine glass first by right clicking and then selecting the “windows” bar, I then selected “transparency’, after this I used the curved tool in order to trace the image so I can create a mask. The curvature tool is very helpful as it helps me move around the harder curves in comparison to the rounded orange. This helped me achieve a seamless cut out. After this I selected both images at once the background and outline and selected “mask” this revealed the glass on a plain white background instead of the original one. I then proceeded to do the same thing to the orange which I found a lot easier due to its consistent curvature. After this I placed the orange into the glass, because both backgrounds are removed, they now fit together rand you would think the orange is actually in the glass.

Using a range of tools, I visually combined the range of motifs I had sketched out and decided on for my poster. A human head was needed to be created for my poster in order to get across this design I used the curvature tool to create a silhouette side profile of a stylised human head. I was not too bothered about the realism of the head as I want surrealism however I wanted to ensure its recognisability for what it was. The lines from using the tool where seamless and helped bring the head together. For one of my motifs I wanted to incorporate space and the galaxy as well as the idea of it being a web like the web of a human brain. I achieved this by creating a Saturn in the centre of the head to represent almost a solar system of brain cells working together, these brain cells are represented through stars which I created through shapes. Saturn was compiled together by using the curvature tool in order to create the shape of the planet and filling it in, then proceeding to use the same tool for the ring. I picked Saturn in particular to overcome any problems I may encounter with it not looking like a planet due to lack of detailed texture, therefor the ring gives it a distinctive touch, so it is unrecognisable yet simple. The web itself I wanted to appear dreamlike, so I didn’t want it to be too perfect as dreams are often angular in a way and I also wanted to portray a real spider web, linking in with nature and the way spider webs are built in order to catch flies. I wanted the web to portray the way humans catch and absorb knowledge. I achieved this web through the use of calligraphic strokes for part of the web, contrasted with the pen tool.

Within my design ideas I decided I wanted to take an approach which incorporated the human mind and space. I decided this because space is supposed to be endless, it is a web that is constantly evolving and getting bigger. I feel this relates to the human brain as it is a web of thoughts and ideas which are constantly evolving and expanding. These two elements I knew I wanted to incorporate from the get-go. I jotted down my ideas and tried to come up with a way to connect them. The galaxy has planets and I like to think of it as a web as everything is in some way connected, the human brain is also a web of thoughts and ideas, I wanted planets to connect in some way within a human head like the way thoughts do. So sketched a quick poster of what I envisioned. I want the colour to include purples and pinks because I feel it is rarely found in nature, only when you look up at the sky and see a sunset. I feel that reflects the out of this world feel I am reaching for. When I think of the mind, I often think of how many thoughts we have buzzing around, our thoughts mash and become jumbled when we are asleep which are our dreams. I feel I want the poster to not only reflect the web of thoughts which are constantly expanding like a galaxy but also a dream as the planets are pictured bouncing around the head. I want to include other elements to make it seem more randomised and surreal. My thoughts on dreams also depicted feeling alone as we only dream with ourselves, I want this to show through on my poster by giving some dark blank spaces within the head where there is a sense of loneliness and struggle with the never-ending possibility of expansion.

Surrealism helps the viewer step into another world, another reality. It often combines everyday mundane ideas with out of this world imagery. The audience for surrealism can be dreamers, they seek thrill and excitement with the images they see and also want to uncover a deeper meaning. Most surrealist images help the audience to escape what is normal and step into something different and unique. Surrealism is not our world but a dream like version with endless possibilities.

This image below uses two separate images to create one entity for this specific art exhibition poster. It showcases a photograph of a normal woman’s face looking up. Across the image is a vibrant drawing with only her eyes peeking out, taking the shape of her face in an artistic unique way. The drawn part of her face is pictured between two grey walls, contrasting her colourful galactic nose and eyes which appears to have used several different images and shapes to come together and create the features. This poster seems to have several meanings within it. One showcases the hidden complexity of humans by contrasting the plain photograph of her face as it is with an overcast of what we are made up of and how fascinating and exciting that is through colour. The grey walls used within the art image which align with the black photographic background help push the narrative that humans are so much more than their surroundings as the colours contrast and signify very different meanings. Grey being mundane and boring, and rainbow being something out of the ordinary and exciting. The artwork coming across her eyes may signify that she is daydreaming, and that world is what she sees, it may also signify multiple dimensions and that there are two sides to our world with endless possibilities. There is a lot to unpack with surrealism.