Summary of Juniper Tree
The juniper tree is a tale about a wealthy couple that prays to have a child. One winter day, the wife begins to cut an apple under a juniper tree. She cuts her finger and the blood begins to drip on the snow. This leads to her wishing for a child “as white as snow and as red as blood”. She leaves to go back to her house. A couple months later, the wife becomes severely ill from eating berries from the juniper tree, so she asks that upon her death, she be buried under the tree. A month later, she dies giving birth to a boy, as white as snow and as red as blood.
Later on, the husband remarries and the couple have a baby girl. As the years pass, the step mother grows to hate the boy with a passion. The boy is abused and cursed at every day and cannot find peace in the house. In efforts to secure the inheritance for her daughter, the stepmother plans to lure the boy into a room with a chest of apples. While reaching for the apple she slams the lid of the chest on his neck, decapitating him. She bandages his head to his body and sits him down on a chair outside with the apple on. his chest. His sister asks him for the apple, and upon the step mothers advice, she boxes his ear- causing his head to roll off his body. The stepmother begins to cook his remains into a “blood soup” to feed the family for lunch. When the husband comes home, the step mother constructs a story of the son leaving to stay with his uncle. He is shocked to find out that his son had left without saying goodbye.
Crying, the sister buries her brothers bones under the juniper tree. following some mist, a bird emerges from the tree. The bird visits local townspeople to tell them the story in the form of a song. After each visit, he acquires a gold chain, shoes and a millstone and makes its way back to the house. Meanwhile, the stepmother complains about “raging fires within her arteries” which are reveled to be the cause of her hate. she goes outside to get some relief, and is suddenly struck by the millstone. The son emerges from a cloud of smoke and is reveled to be the bird. He is reunited with his family and they head inside for lunch.
Journaling and Thought Process
When I first read this story, it came off as very morbid and gruesome. I was especially amused by the beginning of the story, where the woman sacrifices her blood under a tree to make her wish come true. Dark magic, biblical symbolism and fantasy were the themes that were most obvious to me. I felt that the mother was a main character of the story even though her appearance was brief. She was the connection between the series of events leading up to the stepmother’s demise.
I started journaling what comes to mind when I think of these themes.
Research and Source Finding
I began by finding images to represent parts of the story. I tried to find several versions so that I could test out which looked best with the other pictures.
Concept Statement
First draft concept –
For my collage, I’m going to be focusing on this paragraph from juniper tree. I’m going to portray time by moving the series of events clockwise around the page. I want to use the elements and principles to portray the emotions felt in this paragraph, intertwining them with the events to show a flow of time and space. I want to portray this part of the story in an extreme way, incorporating elects of darkness and implying black magic with the apple. retro esthetic, associate magic with historical–
As it progressed –
For this collage, I used line and shape and the underlying theme of my piece. The line work helped create dimension and balance to contribute to the overall harmony of the collage. The “glow” changed the value of the triangles to emphasize the mystical aspect of the story. The whole piece focuses on the beginning of the story where the biological mother is alive. Light is used to emphasize that the blood sacrifice and the symbolism of the apple is a crucial aspect of the story. With these Elements and principles combined, the viewer can obviously infer that this is a portal of the calm before the storm. The subtle hints of red color serve to tease the viewer into trying to comprehend what’s to come.
Exercises
This was my first time making something in photoshop so I tried these exercises. For the vase, I changed the color of the leaves using a hue mask. I made these edits using Photoshop on iPad. Later on, I found that I could do a lot more and experiment more on the desktop version of the software.
For this Exercise, I had to create a collage using a picture of a: teddy bear, umbrella, goggles and a cell phone. I also created this one on the iPad so the tools I used were limited.
Now that I know how to use more tools, I would have used the blur tool to make the parts look more coherent.
Production
I began by adjusting the hue of my background image.
I chose red as the hue color because I wanted to start giving subtle hints to the viewer about whats to come in the story. The red builds anticipation, and the changes so far are so small that its still the calm before the storm.
Then I started extracting parts of the morphed image. I did this by screen shotting images and then importing them into illustrator. Initially, I felt more comfortable using illustrator to do this project. I already knew how to do some of the things I intended to do. As I moved further into the composition, I found that if I had started in photoshop, the layering process would have been a lot easier and more seamless because I would be able to change things as I go with the layers. but because I imported a jpeg into photoshop, I was limited and had to find another way to achieve the overlays that I wanted.
Then I stared overlaying the morphed image onto the original and incorporating triangles into the composition.
Then I started using the lasso tool to select and copy to remove the background from the piece.
I selected the bright areas using (Select)-(Color Range), then I copied that on to a seperate layer. Then I used the Radial Blur tool to add a light and multiplied the layers to taste.
I added a glow around the triangles to make them stand out more.
I added the dark grey background to make the triangles (cone) stand out more.
In my last steps I added an apple, snow, wings and blood to bring the whole piece together. I had to adjust the opacity of each to make them harmonize.
Final Project
Image Citations –
https://www.hippostcard.com/listing/utah-juniper-in-desert-canyon-ancient-gnarled-tree-postcard/4210047
https://www.zedge.net/wallpaper/3375cac6-5c7c-3b6f-951e-0e3b27f0394b
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-landscape-trees-silhouette-sunset-vietnamese-709385299
https://images.all-free-download.com/images/graphicthumb/snow_and_trees_196729.jpg
https://images.app.goo.gl/Dkz3cMYnMtnppSaN6
https://picsart.com/i/325544506041211