Positive and Negative Space

Image 1

 

The original resource is a magazine cover from vogue. A very retro like photography. I was attracted  by the use of color of the photo. The women's face on a wall is presented in light color, and as a construct, the passengers standing and passed by are in dark color. This is very interesting. So I choose this image for my positive and negative space. I was interested to see what will happen. 

  

First the woman on left is colored with black. Details are lost. We can now see she is in all black. However we can still tell that this is black shape may use to be a human figure. 

       

Then the male on right is colored with black paint. but we can still tell that this is a human figure. As in the original image, he also contains many black portion. Hence this move didn't create a lot of differences. However with the two human figure colored with black paint, we can observe that woman's face on wall became more outstanding. Her eyes are every outstanding. Because at first we normally don't pay much attention to the black shape in front of the colored part. 

If we painted the woman's face with black. We observed that a mass of black appeared. Again, detail are lost. And it may be a harm for images like magazine cover, as such image always need many detail to attract attention.  

However I love the third piece especially, with the two human figures painted with black, and the lady face on the wall become super outstanding. In this version, probably the text 'VOGUE' will looks more fit in white color.

Now the background is removed with replacement of white paint. A pure positive & negative space image is created. Bascially all the details on the image is removed. By looking at this version alone, we probably can't figure out what is the image about.

The presence of VOGUE text is important as it indicate the meaning and function of the image as a magazine cover.

Image 2

 

The second image is 2 chairs placing above water. And there is a shirt hanged on the brown chair. By looking at the image, looking at the water, looking at the land behind, I felt peaceful; probably it is because there is no human presentation on this image. Sometimes zero human presentation indeed gives me a quite and peaceful feeling.

 

Firstly I removed the 2 chair. So now the chair's space is placed with white color

Then I came to my 3rd image!

 

The original image - My market day. A very fashion image, colorful and complext

 

Rabbit hat turn to black

 One lady turn to black

 Two lady turn to black

 

All the human features inside the image turn to black

 

The result

And I think if you try to do positive and negative space with a fashion image, then I think it will look very funny. 

Cause in a fashion image you will probably have a lot of exaggerate details, and once the importance details are lost, the picture lose its meaning. 

Collage Exercise

Scale

As I don't have many source pictures in class, so I will test the effect of applying scale technique to this real-person image.

Although I was thinking that scale technique may be better applied in some solid goods other than human face.

Anyway, let’s try!

1.     I scaled up and down the size of his eyes and paste around his original eyes.

2.     Then, I scale down the size of his hand, and paste around his mouth  

3.     The change and effect of scale is not very obvious, this is probably I did too much and was looking forward some artistic effect. But the final outcome looks abundant in layers.

4.      Yes, the end product looks cool.

5.     The new smaller eyes actually looks like a eyebrow of the model  

Abstraction?

The final product actually has some sense of abstraction in inside. Because it doesn’t work in a way that people will normally shape. Normal pictures won't have 3 or 4 hands and a few pair of eyes.

That’s why I would like to say it is abstract.

In week 4 we learnt from  Jan Verwoert  that what forces people to go into abstraction. She mentions that abstraction is something beyond belief because they are manifestations of structural plotting alone. It is beyond the shape life in cities with the physical force.

I think it is quite interesting to think about the reason behind why I created something abstract. Maybe I am also looking for something beyond shaped everyday life.

 

Repetition 

My source for repetition is also a real person’s face image. At first, his artistic and exaggerated eye make up attract me. Hence I was thinking maybe I can do something to his eye make-up

Design process.

1.     I photocopied another 2 set and cut the eye, as I feel the eye is the most impactful and artistic element in the original copy.

2.     Then I pasted them beside the original eyes.

3.     We can notice, as a result, the new image with repetition becomes even more impactful. Probably because now we have 3 sets of the impactful eyes now. The few layers looks like a butterfly mask, surrounded around the man's face.

     

So the original source of my deconstruction is a flying bird. I choose this image because it has a pair of bright and beautiful wings. Hence when I looked at this image, I wan to do something to the bird’s wings.

What will happen if I deconstruct all his wings into pieces? Will the pink looks better in separate parts? With such thoughts, I started cutting.

Deconstruction 

—I actually enjoyed the moment of cutting the feathers apart, there is a feeling of ' I am creating something' during that process

－ The image changed totally, with destruction, the new image has a feeling of 'separate' and that's what I am looking for

－ I was looking forward some 'separation' and 'disorder', or probably 'disobey of the rules'. So you can't tell what the image is in the first look. But while looking at it, you feel interesting. 

And I think the blank white part of the paper doesn't make a good contrast in color. It just looks blank. Hence if those blank parts can be filled with repetition, I believe the final outcome will look even better.

 

See you next week :) 

Line exercise

 

0. The Original - So this is my chosen image, a fashion magazine cover in black and white. Fashionable and elegant. Let's see what happened after I turned it into purely lines. 

 

1. The Outline - Firstly I just traced the outline, without looking at the original image, we still can probably guess that this is a person's figure. You can see the hat, the scarf, and the face's shape. Hence the outline ensures that we know what is happening there. However, we are unable to know the details. We won't be able to know that is this person smiling? crying? or making any kind of facial expression.  

 2. The Detail - Then I chose to trace the eyes and the mouth of that lady. However, as she has a pretty thick make-up and eyeliners, the effect come with only thin lines are pretty interesting. The eye doesn't look like an eye and the lip also doesn't look like a lip. This probably shows how important is thickness important in images.

 3. The everything - Fine, I know this looks scary. In fact I was scared by the effect after I finished line tracing. In fact, my favorite part is the net covered on the lady's face. However, out of my expectation, it turned strange with purely lines! Shock.

 4. The thickness - After adding thicker lines and dots, finally we can see a better image. The emphasis of the net stand out. With thickness of lines, the expression of this image is very clear. Thanks to thick lines!

However, as compare to the original image, the line drawing lacks of shadows and light. Hence with only lines, the image tend to be more flat as compare to the original version