This is my interpretation of Nightmare by Fuseli. I photoshopped images together and then used the dodge and burn tools and several others to get the effect I wanted.

These were the images I created in photoshop from a scanned image of a leaflet set. I was just playing with filters and patters and different treatments for the object, trying to get a hold on this photoshop thing. Personally I think the bottom two ended up looking like really bad Hawaii shirt patterns.

This is my exaggeration project.

It is pretty obvious what I wanted to exaggerate. I constantly get asked ignorant questions when people hear I am from South Carolina, and after answering quite politely for several months I got tired of the Q and A. So I started exaggerating my past, and where I was from, what my family was like, and what my living conditions were like. I did not grow up in a mobile home with a old rusted truck permanently parked in the yard with old furniture sprawled out in the yard, but this is often the image that people paint about me when they meet me, so I figured it would be a fun aspect to play up.

This is the puzzle I made for my memory project. I decided to make a puzzle for each piece to represent a specific memory, and an image or idea, or even people are not whole unless they have these memories in order to shape who they are. I also used the self portraits of my classmates in the compositions as actual tattoos on the arms to represent memories we share with others in order for them to see us the way they want us to be seen.

The missing piece represents memories we have forgotten or have become obscure as we have aged, and the two extra pieces represent memories that no longer seem relevant or have any importance, but they still stick with us.

This image is my text project. I used the outlines of black birds to fill with text and layer the text to give it depth and shadow. The text I chose was a song by the Beatles titled Black Bird. This song has had an impression on me due to the fact its my mothers favorite song, and when I was a small child and would get sick, that would be the song she would play for me till I fell asleep. Now whenever I am feeling sad, or sick or gloomy, I play this song and it lifts my spirits.

Triptych

In my triptych I wanted to show the experience I had when I was younger with my uncle and mother. My mother is a nurse and my uncle a dentist, so they both tried to instill in me a degree of self preservation. When I was younger I really hated grooming myself, so when I was about six and I was still not brushing my teeth, my uncle brought me to his office, and for about an hour showed me image after image of tooth decay and mouth disease. Needless to say being such a small child and seeing these nasty images left a scary impression on me. After that I began brushing my teeth at least 4 times a day and showering 2 to 3 times a day. Since then I have calmed down my compulsive grooming to showering once a day and brushing my teeth twice a day, but I still am very aware of my grooming habits.

I was hoping to depict that in my triptych by showing in the top image, my teeth as of today, and how my good grooming has kept my pearly whites nice. In the second screen is an image of me scrubbing my teeth clean with a frenzied look on my face to show how keeping them clean is important to me. The the bottom image shows what my teeth may look like if I were to stop brushing and let my teeth decay. I was going for a little bit of shock and disgust with the image relationship and using colors that would harmonize the composition. I worked for about 5 hours on this piece and I think it turned out pretty well, I would say im pretty proud of it.