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Broken Society
Working with Textures and Overlays
By definition, a broken society is a precieved or apparent general decline in moral values; having a society marked by the existance of widespread poverty, deprivation and deparivity.
On the topic of broken society, we were tasked to create a strong piece to display this message using portrait pictures that had been taken in the studio, along with mark making in class, using those to influence the message further. More photoshop skills had also been learnt along the way to assist us in creating our final piece.
Pictured above: two of the best pictures chosen to experiment with for this project.
After the pictures were taken and selected, the mark making was underway. An A3 paper, which had been folded into 8 divisions, acted as one space per texture. The following are the results of this process. With an additional from a resource that our teacher had advised carried a strong texture. We were then to choose eight out of the nine textures we had with us to use in our experiments.
After compiling pictures of the model used and textures, it was time to experiment.
The First Experiment
This was the first piece created, experimenting with just one texture and the model. By changing the curves and levels of the texture and eventually setting the texure layer on an overlay, the outcome became some sort of burnt texture on the model.
The Second Experiment
This is the second portrait created in relation to the topic.
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The way this was made was by first desaturating the model's image. Giving a nice monochrome picture. Next, the cracked paint texture had its curves messed with, to create this stronger image and contrast, which was then overlaid onto the model's layer.
The Third Experiment
This was the third portrait made.
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The background was created by merging two textures together, one as the main focus of the background, and the other texture was used to influence the chaos in contrast to the simple monochrome image of the model.
The Fourth Experiment
This is the fourth portrait created.
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This is also the combination of the second and third experiment. The texture from the second portrait that had been altered and overlaid onto the model has a very strong contrast in comparison to the pale coloured chaos behind him.
The Final Outcome
This is the final outcome from my experiments. The reason for this being my strongest piece is because I have managed to compile and effectively use the textures and images that worked well in the previous ones to create a much stronger portrait as the final outcome.
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This consists of the background from the third experiment with addition of another texutre of random brush strokes to accompany the existing ones. An additional texture was added onto the model's face, the one from the second experiment.
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The way this portrait shows a ‘broken society’, is by the textures used, accompanied by the model. The model’s expression help shows this with the gaze place onto the face. With a faraway, distanced look, unfazed by whatever is in front of the model, showing that as time goes on, no one in civilisation is really surprised by anything that happens anymore. This also applies to gruesome scenes, disasters, and the various current affairs occurring around the world.
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