Book carving

For my book carving I wanted to go more along the lines of something creep; I had one main theme that I started to go with which was "fear" I went around asking everyone what they were scared of and looked up different fobias.  The two that I sketched out were the "seven deadly sins" as monsters comming after a child, which I wasn't a fan of.  The other sketch I did was from an idea I had received from Michelle with two people in the woods and one of them had their head chopped off.  Once I decided that it was creepy enough I started to label the different parts of my picture so I knew what to carve out when. This planning was so important because I had to make sure there was nothing too small or hard to cut out. One piece that was harder for me was carving out a hanging man in the background, the rope ended up being too skinny and he fell out of the book which was frustrating for me because then it became "less creepy". I decided to make the book creepier I would cut the background out and make each layer get smaller and smaller making it look almost like a maze adding an unsettling theme.  With my design I wanted the book on the back cover and some of the back pages to look like they had been sitting in a puddle of blood,  and inside the book I painted the uncarved pages black,  and on one page I painted my fingers red and grabbed the book to look like a bloody hand grabbed it.  The "blood"  I felt was crucial to the overall design because it made the book,  and what is inside, even scarier. In the inside pages I carved and dark figure and a girl in the front center with trees all around them, giving an uneasy feel. I took risks with the background since it doesn't go with the "traditional" forrest with more trees; it's black and gray with the cut out getting smaller as you go back. Another thing that I added to my book was in the back cover I carved "lose your mind" not something a person would see just looking at the original work. Overall I felt this project was quite successful the colors all had a slight gray painted over them giving the whole atmosphere a creepier feel,  all in all I am very pleased with the outcome.

(pictures will be added Thursday I will not be around the book until then)

Mixed media

To show amusement in this project I found pictures of beautiful women from magazines for my background giving it a modern feel. For the center of my peice of my work I used the face of a barbie doll and burned half of it to show what society sees as beautiful and what this "beauty" is making people do to themselves. The mixed media for me was fun I was able to use different materials that I wouldn't normally use in a project like the barbie and fire. The part that ties the whole peice together is the 3D face, her hair makes all the pictures come together pulling your eyes to her face. I learned that collages aren't just pictures glued together they have to work together and make sense. I had challenges trying to decide what the face in the middle should be, first I thought I'd paint it but I found that didn't look as realistic as I wanted so I thought of printing a picture off but that's wouldn't give a different effect from the other pictures so I decided I would use a doll face, which worked out well and gave me the look that I wanted.