BACKGROUNDS
My first background was made with intent and a lot of detail, inspired by a series of photographs I had taken of trees. I have always been interested in the way the branches intertwine, the layers in appearance and how much texture can be seen, even from a far away distance. From this, I began to draw. Using procreate and a charcoal pencil, I traced outlines from different trees and then began to add my own details from elements that stood out from images I had taken.
This was extremely fun and whilst it took me a long time, I found it worth it in the end to have something so intricate and full of life.
The black and white outline did not fid the aesthetic of my project and so I brought in autumn colours, reds and oranges with splashes of neon yellow. These colours created a stepping stone before playing with overlapping and different editing tools.
My next background was once again taken from elements I favoured in random photos I have in my camera roll. A lot of things that seem ‘useless’ can be utilised if you have the right means and when I started to look at past photos I had taken, I saw little things that felt extremely fun to play with.
One image I had taken, had multiple bright squares in the background and can be seen through a reflection on an old TV screen. As the rest of the image was grey and dark, I began to think about how if I played with the brightness and contrast, I could make sure that the squares were the only thing visible to an audience.
As I worked analysing a variety of photos that involved the sun leaking through trees, I decided to use one of these as my background by using different editing tools to bring forward elements I favoured and fit into my project’s aesthetic.
The next three background experiments were done at random. The first two were done at the same time, after working with charcoal on one of the outlines for the deer head turn, I was in the process of cleaning up and saw that the water mixed with charcoal made really interesting marks and textures, along with spraying water directly on the surface and wiping the charcoal along to make different smudges.
The third image was done by looking around my classroom and noticing light coming through a black out piece of paper, used to stop light glaring onto the lecture screens. I thought the rips and scrapes looked fascinating and I wondered how these would show up on my printer app and so I took a photo and tested it. It worked so well with my images that I decided to use it.
I loved the texture and noise in the first two experiments and so I utilise them for a number of other backgrounds, changing the colour values and incorporating different images. Each background was unique on its own but had similar elements. I had a lot of fun seeing how far I could push images using different editing software’s.
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