Blog Post #1: Summer Work

1. What idea guided this work?

I plan to do my portfolio about the effects of unrestricted internet access at a young age in order to reflect on my experiences growing up with the internet at my fingertips. For this assignment, I decided to create it based on how it was like exploring the Internet as a child - everything tends to pop out at you with all of its colors and fonts. This vibrance and saturation disguises the actual harm and content in social media websites, and combined with being a child - it was much easier to access harmful content. I also wanted to relate this idea of finding the Internet unsupervised to traveling in a dark alleyway - it’s sketchy, but yet everything is so attractive.

2. Did you practice, experiment or revise any aspect of this work?

In my previous portfolio, I did heavy rendering with blending. However, I wanted to experiment with more graphic design-esque pieces with more emphasis on linework, composition, patterns, and shapes. To do this, I utilized the lasso tool in order to render, shade, create subjects, and to highlight. I went through multiple attempts with the shading by playing around with different layer settings, textures, colors, and more in order to introduce a dark, sketchy feel I wanted to the piece.

3. Are your choices of materials or processes related to your idea? How?

I used Procreate, and I mainly used textures such as multi-line and dots. This relates to my idea because it was created on a digital interface, and the whole theme is centered around the digital world. By using digital media to create art, I hope to play around more with the idea of the digital world and how I can alter it to push my theme even further. The textures are related to my idea as well because social media apps and websites are always using typography, colors, patterns, etc. in order to attract audiences. By using dots and multi-lines, I hoped to introduce a type of playfulness into the piece to illustrate how internet content tries to often disguise harmful content under a lighthearted tone.