The goal of this set of images is to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia was chosen as the theme of this artwork since it is intriguing to me how the passage of time can enhance the joy of memories. The first image, the one containing the cereal, is personal. I used to eat sugary cereals and watch cartoons every day, but as I grew older I stopped. The image has a surreal quality to it since the thought of passing my days eating cereal and watching cartoons is almost an unobtainable dream at this point. The second image, the one containing children playing soccer, is a less personal, more general outlook on nostalgia. I used the rose colored glasses to symbolize how we look back on memories with a sense of fondness. The fact that everything besides what is behind the lenses lacks color symbolizes that in the moment the experience may not have been as exciting as we later remember it. To create these images, I took a picture of my hand with the bowl and uploaded it to be used in Photoshop. The rest of the images were taken from the internet. In the rose colored glasses image, I used three copies of the children playing soccer. I had one for each of the lenses and a background image. I desaturated the background image and made the lenses in the glasses translucent by erasing them with a opacity less than 100%.
Several Elements of art and principles of design were used in these images. In the image of the cereal, I filled up the entirety of the space with objects in order to create a feeling of overwhelmingness sometimes associated with dreams. Additionally, the cereal pieces lack form. The 2-D appearance of the cereal adds to the surreal quality of the image. Also, I positioned the cereal boxes so that it looked as if they were expanding upward and outward across the screen. This causes the viewer’s eyes to move upward and out towards the top corners of the image. In the rose colored glasses image, I used color to differentiate how we viewed the past with how it actually was. As previously mentioned, we sometimes look back on memories with a greater fondness than we actually felt while experiencing it. The color also worked to emphasize the area behind the glasses, thus drawing the viewer’s eyes to the center of the image. Furthermore, the images behind the lenses are somewhat blurred. These blurred lines represent how we cannot remember all of the details of the past.
No critiques were performed in class; however, if they were, I would have made the appropriate changes.
Note: As mentioned above, I used stock photography in the two images.
.