Click here to full-size the image and properly see the more subtle details
This image is a Photoshop re-creation of a dream I had once, very recently. For several months, I had a complication with my contacts that kept causing my left eye to water at random points throughout the day. Consequently, the fluid from my eye kept creating a temporary film across my contact. Due to this, at random points throughout the day, my vision would become blurry to the point of being “blinded” in either my entire left eye or portions of my vision on that side. Understandably, after several weeks of this occurring, this issue became quite stressful and concerning. I had to manage taking notes, attending job interviews, and just generally walking around campus with the understanding that every time I had to blink my eyes, it may cause the fluid being produced by my eye to create a temporary film on my contacts again. Thankfully, this problem has finally been resolved. However, a few days after the problem was finally resolved, paranoia that it may return manifested itself in the form of this dream.
In this dream, I was walking through an empty class room when suddenly my entire vision became darker and took on the appearance of something only describable as an old VHS. Then, large circles of static formed in my vision, similar to the fashion in which the film in my contacts would arise during my day. The very distinguishing characteristic of this was that the bottom-left circle was very distinctly blue, and the top-right circle was very distinctly red. Also, similar to how I imagine this image may be, the static was very immediately noticeable and quite difficult to look away from, especially with the color being so strong in contrast to the darker surroundings of the room I was in. It is important to note that this recreation is significantly brighter than the dream itself. However, in the process of designing my dream, I realized that besides the static, the dream itself was actually too dark and a faithful recreation of it would wash away all the details in the images I chose to work with. Additionally, the eyes were an added touch for artistic story-telling. The dream itself was quite creepy to experience with the sensation of being trapped within my own eyes and unable to see or focus on anything besides the static. Therefore, in order to encapsulate that sensation of discomfort and creepiness, as well as subtly convey that this image is not an object in this dream world, but something being created in your eyes themselves, nine of these eyes were scattered throughout the image. The intention for this was that the longer you stare at the image, the more eyes you begin to notice and the less comfortable you begin to feel observing the art-piece.
Below is how I created this dream sequence:
This is the original image that I begin with, unedited, to begin this project. The image was found from pexel.com and turned out to be an amazing base image for this project. My first edit to this image was to duplicate the layer three different times and modify the blending options for each one to either have only pure green, red, or blue light. Then, a shear distortion was applied to the green layer producing the following image:
After this, the blue layer was given a similar shear distortion creating the following effect:
With that done, the original image was duplicated one more time to create a distortion layer on the top using the marque tool to create a layer mask of random rectangles spanning the image. Once only these portions of the distortion layer remained, the shear distortion effect was then repeated to give the image the glitched appearance shown below:
At this point, the second default pattern fill layer mask was added at 150% scale using 25% opacity and the multiply blend mode to the image to slightly adjust some of the colors and give the VHS effect some additionally definition in the image as shown below:
After this, a selective color layer mask was added in order to alter the blue light concentration in the darker portions of the image to give it a more authentic VHS appearance. This was accomplished by selecting “Blacks” in the selective color adjustment layer prompt and setting cyan to +20 and yellow to -20 as shown below:
Once the adjustment layer was completed, some background noise was then added to the image as shown below by creating a layer of pure black and selecting the noise filter and setting it monochromatic at 400% with an opacity of 17% to once again further improve the authentic VHS look:
At this point, the VHS effect is complete. However, given the macabre nature of this dream, it seemed only fitting to apply a black and white filter to pull some of the color out of the image and establish a stronger sense of dread in the image. To accomplish this, a standard black and white filter was applied at 25% opacity as shown below:
Now that the background is finally done, the circles of static were then added by once again utilizing the noise filter. To accomplish this, a new layer was created and filled to be completely red before applying the noise filter. Then, the layer was stretched to be larger than the canvas in order to artificially increase the grain size of the static in the image. The select and mask tool was then used to isolate a single circle of static in the final image. A softer edge was used on this circle to help the effect fade into the image and aid in the unity of the piece despite the striking nature of the edit shown below:
The same process was then repeated for the blue circle as shown below:
Finally, the eyes were then added to the image. Each eye was subjectively edited based upon the location of it within the image. However, most of the editing was accomplished organically by just embedding the eyes in different parts of the layers in order to utilize the effects already established for the VHS background. In addition to this, the eraser tool, opacity, blend modes, and warp effect were all utilized for the eyes as needed to achieve the best unity possible within the image as shown below:
Three different images of eyes were utilized for this design as show below. The URL’s accompanied with each will provide you with the source from which I found these images for this project:
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/colorful-dripping-eye-olga-shvartsur.html?product=framed-print
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/colorful-dripping-eye-olga-shvartsur.html?product=framed-print
http://www.alexisrael.org/single-post/2017/01/04/Vayigash-Tears-of-Reunion
