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SOCIETY
In this section, I will be looking at Magdiel Lopez's works, more specifically, his works involving statues of greek/roman times. The reason for looking at his works specifically is because they show basic concepts of society, such as religion.
The following is an analysed version of one of his works.
This is one of his pieces from his Make A Poster Everyday Series.
CONCEPT
The image depicts a greek bust that has the upper half of his face split from the bottom, which has been divided into three parts, and the neck has also been sliced from the head. Accompanying the sliced bust is a circle with a complimenting gradient, used to draw more focus towards the triple sliced head, alongside several thin rectangles in the background with contrasting gradients compared to the main circle. Typography can also be seen positioned around the portrait's subject, giving a more organised look.
PROCESS
This piece was most probably made using 3d modelling or from a photograph taken of the bust, typography, and photoshop.
If I were to recreate this piece, I would first start off with slicing the bust carefully, adding shaders wherever required, then applying it to the canvas. On several separate layers, I would then create the gradient 2D shapes for the background. The typography would come in last, being placed around the canvas and the subject, using a font that does not take the attention away from the centre but rather complements the work entirely. The end product is a piece of incredibly aesthetically pleasing visuals.
All in all, this piece also portrays how the Greeks, mainly, built society as we know it today. The depiction of this point is made known in this piece, as the greek statue's head had been divided into sections, all with different elevations from one another and different sized proportions of front-faced features. This can be referring to the social class made by the greeks. A social class is a ranking based upon a person's status in their society, eg. similar incomes, property, etc. The five being: the upper class, the upper-middle class, the lower middle class, the working class, and the poor class.
The following are experiments done using a drawing of a greek statue that we were tasked to do. The subsequent experiments include adding on tears to the drawing.
Head Slicing
The next part in this topic was to slice the head around the mid part of the face, and add a solid shape behind with an accompanying gradient, all while trying to make the solid shape appear 3D and as if it were actually coming out of the top portion.
For the first step of this segment, the head was sliced into two parts using the free hand lasso tool, a good stabilizer value, patience, and one smooth line. The target was to get a slice that was not rough or had jagged edges, but a steady one, idealy following the shape of the drawing's facial features.
This shows the second step in this process. After the head had been sliced, a solid coloured ellipse has been placed behind both layers of the drawing. Turning off the bottom part's layer, the ellipse is manipulated into shape so that it will line up with the edges of the top part's lines. Then, a gradient is applied onto the solid coloured shape, and the ellipse's side that is not in contact with the top portion is erased, to make it seem like a realistic 3D object, and not just a flat ellipse. A shade of near-black is then applied onto the bottom part of the ellipse to give the effect of the bottom half overlapping.
The Final Outcome
This is the final outcome from this project. The background was made by firstly putting a gradient of two soft colours to cover the entire surface. Next, came the multicoloured gradient rectangles spreaded out in the background, on top of the previous gradient. Following that, is a sphere with yet another gradient but with slightly more contrasting colours. The sliced drawing was then place upon the background, the head being the main focus, so it has been placed in the circle where it will be the main focus of the entire portrait. Last but not least, is the typography accompanying the piece.
Additional Works
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