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Women in Society
This section is made to recognise and acknowledge the women in society that have made great achievements, no matter how big or small.
The elements used in this project includes photography, image manipulation typography and illustration.
Thought Process
There are many great women in society to make the work about, but for my works, I have chosen to make the work about Theodora "Teddy" Quinlivan.
Teddy Quinlivan is an American model discovered in 2015 by Louis Vuitton's creative director and has since gone on to model for brands such as Dior and Saint Laurent. She came out as transgender in 2017 and was hired as Chanel's first openly transgender model in 2019. Quinlivan also decided and vowed to stop working with any brands or designers that have been accused of sexual misconduct after coming out with her own experiences with it and . This makes her one of the most outspoken and confident person in the fashion industry with her identity. It is not common for a person of the trans community to be as confident and bold as her, especially in fashion, so making Quinlivan the subject for this brief is fitting.
First things first, images of Teddy Quinlivan. Fortunately, as she is a model, that means it is easier to find high-quality images. Pictured above are selected photos from her works, interview, and her own social media.
The next step was artist studies and evaluations.
Matt Cunningham
Cunningham's work revolves mainly around pulp art from the 80s and 90s, ranging from comics to movie posters. I chose Cunningham as an artist to evaluate as his style is are basic collages that are alluring despite the simplicity in it. The idea of taking existing images, breaking them down and combining them to create a new spectacular piece is heard of, but rarely seen as there tend to be more "modern" works being created. Cunningham has mentioned that his pieces have elements of nostalgia in it, having grown up during the times where this particular style of art is common.
Matthieu Bourel
Matthieu Bourel's works of image manipulation is an uncommon style seen around. With his style, he gives a good emphasis on the focal point, being the model's face, and the background within it. This causes the viewer to not stray away from this element of the piece. His work gives off a distorted reality feel to it, as seen here with this piece in particular. Bourel self-describes his work as "data-ism", meaning the full understanding of all the information that surrounds a person and turning it into a piece that conveys the points of view effortlessly.
Henry Flores
Henry Flores makes use of head slicing, typography and vibrant colours coupled with monochrome to create his works. Having a pop-centric work has its advantage of capturing a person's attention easily, but involving black and white aspects help with defining the focal point and the foreground from the background. By using a limited colour palette, this avoids being overwhelmed by a large variation, keeping the viewers' attention affectively.
Artist Replications
Three pieces were made as a replication of each of the artist's works evaluated above to properly comprehend their styles and methods.
Matt Cunningham
Matthieu Bourel
Henry Flores
Matt Cunningham's process and images:
On the right: Original picture of the skull used for the recreation portrait.
Starting from the left, the first step was to crop out a bust of the model's photo and isolate it from the background. After that, the bust was split down the approximate middle with a lasso tool, separating it into two layers. A line on the left half of the model was added, to emphasize the model being a 3D aspect instead of just a 2D photograph. Following that, the picture of the sull on the right was isolated from the background and other elements, allowing it to be placed under the model layers. In Cunningham's portrait, there were liquid drips from the skull. However, as I was not able to find any pulp art of drips similar to his, lassoing tear shapes from the skull and adjusting its size and angle does the trick just fine. The last thing was to just fill in the empty spaces within the two halfs.
Henry Flores' process and images:
Images used:
Out of the three recreations, this Flores' took the longest due to the number of elements incorporated into the piece. First, the portrait of Quinlivan was cropped and desaturated, with the background filled with the same turquoise colour as Flores'. Next, the head was sliced and the top portion of the face was deleted off. Elipses were added next for both cuts and erased to be into the correct shape. Shading on the bottom segment and below the bottom section was done following that, and the main typography for the piece was added and altered along with a cropped and resized image of Quinlivan in more of a sitting pose. Lastly, the rest of the elements of the piece were added, making adjustments to the main typography's colour, position as well as altering the smaller Quinlivan's colour to monochrome.
Matt Bourel process and images:
Artwork and paintings done by:
赵小黎 (Zhao Xiao Li)
For something so intriguing, it was thankfully not too difficult to recreate. To start off, the image was cropped from the background as well as segments of the face and neck regions. The process of cropping out parts of the face and neck was repeated for two more layers of the image with the only difference being that the image gets slightly smaller each time. Next, a drop shadow effect was added onto each layer, to give an emphasis on the 3D element. Finally, after colouring over the middle layer with the trans flag, another layer was created underneath it to place the cut outs from Xiao Li's paintings.
Final Piece
This is the final product done under two hours as the initial final.
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