Week 13 - Organic and Manufactured

CRAFT: I used the scanner to obtain images of manufactured and natural items. I scanned a fallen leaf, a dandylion, and a leaf stem plucked from a bush. I used 300dpi. I then cropped the items away from their background with the magnetic lasso tool. I scanned some mesh flowers and my sweater at a larger dpi to get more detail in the woven materials. I created a mask from the fallen leaf and used it to create leaves out of the manufactured materials. I scattered them about the whole background layer of my project, resized, and reduced their saturation and altered their hues to make them naturally colored, though artificial. I copied the dandylion head and duplicated it, rotating each flower to the correct angle to make a circle. I applied a filter to the entire group to increase the hue and saturation. I used the original fallen leaf and copied a circular portion of it to create a background behind the circle of flowers. I resized it as needed. I used liquefy to alter the shape of the leaf stem to make it look more like a peace sign. I again altered the hue/saturation to achieve the desired result. I then applied drop shadow to all of the natural items to make them stand out from their background. I then applied an opaque rainbow gradient over the background layer.

CONCEPT: The assignment was to merge natural and manufactured textures while maintaining a level of recognizable realism. Upon seeing the leaf stem , I thought it resembled a peace sign. Since it was a natural texture, I decided on Peace is Natural. I created the iconic peace sign out of all of the natural materials I obtained. I did not alter them greatly from their natural color because I wanted the realism. I used masks of natural leaves to create cut outs from the manufactured textures. I created a background that resembled nature, but was obviously not composed of organic material. I then added the rainbow gradient to overlay the background because I associate the idea of peace with a lot of color. I thought it helped convey my theme.

COMPOSITION: I gave the manufactured leaves very natural looking hues because I wanted a level of realism even though the items were not organic. I rotated and resized the leaves to make sure that their key parts, such as the stems, were visible and not hidden under the peace sign. I wanted it to be obvious that the background was made of a leaf shape. The peace sign is centered. The dandy lions are the brightest because they are the first thing i want to be seen. Then the eye follows to the green stem within to formulate the peace sign. However, before that correlation is made, you see the flowers...the natural portion. Then with the addition of the stem, the recognizable symbol of peace is formed. Then the eye trails from the brightest portion of the image to the background, which lies apparent that it is not made from the same materials as the peace sign. The title, "Peace is Natural", also conveys this message.