Theme The theme of my piece was based on a dream I had. In the dream I had woken up in my house and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom. When I looked up into the mirror though, my teeth began to fall out and parts of my gums started peeling up and out of my mouth with teeth sticking out of them. After having this dream I looked back and analyzed many of the things that happened in it and what they could have symbolized. In dreams losing your teeth often symbolizes the feeling of losing control. I used this as symbolism in my piece and decided to show the teeth falling into the sink and down the drain to further emphasize that this loss of control is something unable to get back. For the composition of the piece I tried to capture a dream like feeling. I did this through having overlapping panels to show the way in which time in dreams usually is not continuous and there are often gaps from how you get to one part of a dream to another.
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My idea for the final piece evolved a lot through my planning sketches. I first had the idea to make the piece look like a mirror with a girl looking into it with her teeth falling out. After I began to create a thumbnail sketch for this I felt that it seemed too flat, centered, and boring. This gave me the idea to try and change the perspective to a view of a girl standing in a room looking into a mirror where you could see both the back of the girl's head and her facial expression in her reflection. I then tried to brainstorm ways in which I could capture a more stange and warped feeling that dreams often have. I thought it would be interesting to make different parts of the piece separated into different overlapping panels to capture a more warped dream-like version of time. This is because often in dreams time is not continuous and there are gaps in between how you get from one part of a dream to another. This idea was inspired by the use of panels in Junji Ito's comics.
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Through this project I experimented with ways to add texture. One way that I did this was by combining both cross hatching and a dry brushing technique. I first started by laying down my large areas of ink with a paintbrush. I then used a pen and added hatching to the edges of the ink I had laid down previously. Afterwards I used a dry paintbrush and put a small amount of india ink on the tip of it. I then brushed this over the areas I had used hatching on which further added more texture.
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Similarities
-Both Ito’s and my piece have black and white contrast. -I incorporated Ito’s use of hatching to add texture and shadows. -Both Ito’s and my piece are displayed in comic panels. -I used a similar dramatic expression on the subject in my piece to many characters Ito has drawn. -Both Ito’s and my piece have a horror theme. Differences -In my piece the panels overlap, which is different from the majority of Ito’s work. -My art is an individual piece, when Ito’s works are part of a larger comic story. |