Surrealistic Theme

          Since I always needed a push or some kind of  motivation in order to do something or achieve something more like a success, I decided to create a photo of me standing as if I am being pushed towards success with a small hand poking me from back for my Surrealistic Photography. I would create a scene of me going from darkness/dullness to bright world depicting me going from dark world in to the world of success. Also my head will have all different types of waves coming out depicting all not good thoughts going out of my head leading me to success.

Surrealist Artist Inspiration

MAX ERNST: 

          Ernst was born on April 2, 1891 in Bruhl, near Cologne. he is the first son of Philip Ernst, teacher of the deaf and amateur painter, and his wife, Luise. .In 1922 he moved to Paris along with friends Gala and Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and others. During this year he painted 'A reunion of friends', which depicted his associates. It was after this time that Ernst took an active part in founding the surrealist movement. Breton wrote the first Surrealist manifesto in 1924. Ernst also invented a style of art called frottage in 1925. The technique involves pencil rubbings on paper or canvas and also translated to paint scrapings, called grattage. Ernst completed many paintings with this technique.

Artist's name:  Max Ernst

Title: Aqui Submersus

Date: 1919

Description: Aqui submerses means “submerged in water’. The painting depicts a swimming pool surrounded by buildings which are hand drawn.  A clock hanging in the sky reflects on the water as moon. In the pool there is a female up-side down which looks like as if she is drowning. The statue like figure is made of clay who has a mustache which resembles Ernst’s father.  

Analysis: the painting is done in oil on canvas. Max Ernst has painted this keeping in mind his father so the clay stature features his father signature handle-bar mustache. All layers in the painting are well merged which highly pops up the prints on canvas. The painting looks as if it was painted to give a night scene with different types of shadow and dark and dull colors.

  

Interpretation:  the painting looks really simple when seeing it once, however when it is looked from into it, it shows the real meaning of surrealism since the painitng has many simple designs like buildings and many metaphorical symbols like clock as a moon’s reflection in the pool and the female’s half body in the water.

Judgement: overall the painting is an excellent work that shows surrealism. All the colors, shadows and the mood of the painting makes the painting complete. 

Rene Magritte:

            Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist best known for his witty and thought-provoking images and his use of simple graphics and everyday objects, giving new meanings to familiar things. Before finding success as an artist, Magritte was designed wallpaper and advertisements. After a poorly received solo show in 1927, he moved to Paris and became firmly lodged in the surrealist movement.. Magritte wished to cultivate an approach that avoided the stylist distractions of most modern paintings. While some French surrealists experimented with new techniques, Magritte settles on a deadpan, illustrative technique that clearly articulated the content of his pictures. Repetition was his important strategy, informing not only his handling of motifs within individual.

 Artist's name:  Rene Magritte

Title: Popular Panorama

Date: 1926

Description: Popular panorama- painted by Magritte which is an oil on a canvas painting shows a panorama of three different scenarios

Analysis: in the painting, Magritte has presented 3 strata which form a unit. The two surfaces, with sawed, curvy edges, are simultaneously beach and woodland scenes, but they also suggest the materialist wood. The tonal color applied is a dull greenish grey which gives the painting a oppressive atmosphere. 

Interpretation: the vision of the trees fascinates Magritte’s whole life.  The most interesting thing in the painting are the trunks which shoot straight out of the surface, without any roots.

Judgment:  the artwork reminds of a dream which links up 3 completely different landscapes. It is unusual and though provoking.  This artwork shows a great example of surrealism. 

Comparison:  even though these are two different paintings, they both are created by surrealists artists in oil on canvas which has their respective artists thoughts and life experiences in it.  however, Magritte's painting is more involved with panoramic views showing 3 completely different scenes whereas Ernts's painting is more of straight forward views and easy to interpret but is more symbolic. 

Removing head using Photo Shop

Photo walk: primary colors

This picture has all three primary colors- red, blue and yellow all three in one picture. 
 

REPORT

           PicsArt is one of the world's most installed and free photo editing and drawing apps and a unique social network of creatives. It provides diverse, unique content so we can improve as a photographer, designer and artist. It also provides their daily journal and monthly magazine to learn from the professionals and discover inspiring user galleries. PicsArt helps communicate, take exceptional shots, find and make creative collages, blended photos, artistic selfies, and original drawings and also lets us become a part of global community and upload our own photos.

          PicsArt is a network of highly talented, creative people from all over the world. It included professional photographers, designer and artists, but mostly hobbyists and people who just love photo editing. PicsArt is not just a photo editing app but it is much more than that.as shown in figures below, it gives us 4 option- edit, capture, collage and draw. Also it lets you explore, find artists and take part in contests. It lets you find friends, invite friends, shop and so on.

    

               
       

              As shown in the image below (ii), PicsArt helps us take pictures with filters, focus and flash light on/off on it while taking pictures. It provides us with 20 different filters while taking pictures, time lapse of up to 30 seconds along with different kinds of lightening to choose. Whereas, the actual iPhone camera only provides us with 9 filters, 3 second times lapse and no lightening.

(i) 

(ii)

       

      When you we edit a certain picture, it gives us 13 different options  as shown in the image (iii) below to edit our picture such as effects which helps with filters, blurring and color-eye; tools that helps us with different types of cropping, cloning, motioning, curves, adjusting brightness and color and enhancing; draw helps us to draw/doodle with different sizes of brushes and shapes;  mask, border, shape mask which helps us to apply different types of masks in different shapes.;frame, add photo which works more like applying different layers to pictures;  clip-art, call out which helps to add call out messages and shop.  Whereas, when we edit picture on iPhone, it only provides us with crop tool, filters, adjusting color, brightness enhance, color-eye and B&W as shown in image(iv) below.

(iii)

(iv)

                                       

        However, when it come to capturing picture, bursting pictures and picture quality, Iphone camera is way better than the PicsArt camera. As shown in the images below, the  image on the left was taken from PicsArt app and the one on the right was taken from an Iphone camera which has a better picture quality.  

Even though I personally use snapchat camera to take selfies, I refer Iphone camera for better picture quality and image pixels. Overall, Iphone camera is better for taking pictures and PicsArt is better for editing pictures. 

David Hockney Inspired portrait collage

Monica Solanki,2015

                 In order to make a David Hockney inspired collage for a portrait, I took 9-10 pictures of one of my classmate from different angles and different point of views in different lighting. Thereafter, I took all the pictures and edited them in a Photoshop Collage by giving each picture variety of effects and shadows.

David Hockney Inspired Collage

Monica Solanki, 2015

The collage above is inspired by David Hockney's collage. In order to make this collage, I took bunch of pictures of a huge painted wall and put them together in a plain Photoshop sheet to edit them. The pictures taken form different angles and different point of views were then given effects and shadows.

Depth of field

This picture was taken with a key chain in a hand. Further the picture was edited in Photoshop by applying surface blur and erasing what I needed in focus.

I'd rather be

"I'd rather be on a red carpet with Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth"

                  My friend helped me take my picture in such a way that I look like as if i was standing next to Jennifer Lawrence on a red carpet. The actual picture of red carpet had Jennifer, Liam and Josh Hutcherson. When editing the picture in Adobe Photoshop, I cut Josh off of the picture and posted myself in.

Partner Portraiture

"Kick"                          Monica Solanki 2015

                

                              The picture of a girl flying was taken her lying flat on a table such that it looks like she is flying. The other girl on her hand posed in a way that it make her look like as if she was kicking the flying girl into her hair. the two different pictures were further combined and edited in Adobe Photoshop.

Self Reflection

"Water Mirror"