This picture is inspired by the popular travel postcards that try their best to capture the feel of the place they are from. For this postcard I used a picture I took from the Wright Airforce  Base in Dayton, Ohio. The chosen picture was the one that showed the most angles of the airplane offerings you can see when you visit the base. The picture uses shape and color to give the picture some more memorability especially through the text plastered over the picture. In the text I placed some blue sky as well as foliage because while the inside of the base is dark and filled with machinery; the surrounding area was filled with plains, forest, and blue sky. It truly felt isolated in that way, so that is what I attempted to portray through the text picture. And also the red color of the edges were chosen in order to avoid the pictures within the text to blend with the background image because the red separates background from the text imagery. Also the whole picture was placed on a postcard background to really give it the postcard feel that the picture needs. The image was created by first creating the text in Adobe Illustrator and then placing the text in Photoshop in front of the Wright Airforce Base picture. Then the postcard background was placed above the other two layers with as a Multiply layer to grant the text and photo the same color tone as the postcard picture. Then the photo’s edges were blurred with the “refine edges” tool to blur the photo and postcard together.

Artist Statement:

In this surrealist and dream inspired Photoshop there are a few integral elements and principles of art. There is an overall Unity to the picture with the lighting and setting all fitting into one cohesive piece. Additionally there is a lot of Texture in the piece mostly noticeable with the trees having their texture accentuated with the filters applied to them. This texture also slightly stands out in the ground in front of the trees having a rough and leafy look and feel to it. Also the photo has a wide range of Shape to it in the background whereas in the foreground there is more Form in the hand opening the blinds. The contrast of these two elements makes a distinct area between the foreground and background. During the in progress critique, the main standout issues were that the hand looked to be from a picture taking place during the day and also the faces in the background while having white holes seemed to lack sense of presence to them. So to knock two birds out with one stone, I used a lens flare render on the mouths of the faces to give them more presence as well as give a source to the light that hitting the hand. This actually ended up making the picture look much more cohesive between the foreground and the background! So the context to this image was that of a dream in which I awoke in a decrepit cabin. And as I became familiar with my surroundings I started walking to one of the windows in the cabin. When peering through the blinds, I saw these faces with large white holes for both eyes and mouths pouring light from them throughout the forest in front of the window. In order to create an image similar to that of what I saw in my dream, I had to a multitude of different pictures and layers in order to create a custom landscape. I took a multitude of pictures of trees which were then isolated then sent through a glowing line filter. Then the trees were given a black and white filter treatment with varying brown tints added. Behind the trees is a enlarged picture of bushes also run through similar filters but instead with a green tint instead of brown tint. The ground in front of the trees was from an inclined hill on my street covered in grass and leaves that was cropped and then run through the glowing edges filter. Then the faces were crafted from a picture of car lights at night and then a lens flare render was added to the mouths. Behind the faces a black blob was crafted to give the faces a body since without that the faces looked very weird and just not right. For the foreground I took a picture of my hand opening the blinds of a window in my room and then I cleared that picture so that only the hand and blinds remained since I wanted it to look like I was actually peering  at these faces and trees.

To start, some of the principles and elements of art present in the above photo are color, pattern, space, and some asymmetrical balance. The color here is wide ranging but in each pattern sub-segment there is a distinct use of two or three colors as well as the red highlights holding in the feel that this is a Coca-Cola bottle. Then there are the three patterns themselves and the space that contrasts with the photo that arguably takes up up at least a third of the picture with just the neon green lying in that space. And there is the balance of the photo where the bottle itself is symmetrical down the mid-line of the picture but as you move further from the mid-line there is asymmetry in the patterns on each side of the bottle. This edit of a Coca-Cola Vanilla bottle is inspired by Andy Warhol’s art work with a little of a personal twist. Where as Andy used color to highlight parts of a photo in addition to his iconic bright backgrounds and additional effects, I wanted to use color patterns that could maybe attempt to show what it feels like when I see a bottle of Coca-Cola Vanilla. A bottle of vanilla coke, to me, irradiates a sense of happiness which I denoted with the yellow and purple stars/sparkles on the left and also it shines brightly compared to other soft drinks so I showed that feeling with these sharp lines of light that the drink appears to let out. Additionally, Coca-Cola is heavily known for its burn, refreshing feeling, and its carbonation which I tried to show by populating the inner area of the bottle with color dots that evoked close to this feeling for myself. So, when creating this image I started simply with the bottle and asked myself what I see in my head when I think about Coke Vanilla and went section by section in the picture attempting to capture that sight and feeling in my head. The left sparkles were first created by making yellow stars with the pencil tool and then using a smaller sized pencil with the purple color to fill the insides and only keeping the yellow edges. The right section started with making the line shapes I wanted with a blue pencil and then from there a slightly smaller sized pencil below the blue and then an even smaller sized pencil with a light orange color that went over the edge created between the blue and white. The inner dots were created in order to white, blue, then brown and haphazardly placed around in order to capture the randomness of carbonation bubbles in a soft drink. Then lastly I filled in the cap and bottle sticker with red in order to keep the Coke brand in most focus.