Hello, my Inner Blog Circlers! I hope you all are continuing to stay healthy and safe despite the chaos of our current world. It’s during times like these in which we should remember the good moments, whether it be personal or professional. Perhaps you have a fond memory of a project or endeavor that you completed which you knew stretched your limitations. You learned new skills and capabilities you never realized you had. I can attest to this sort of thing, with a project that actually happens to be on in my portfolio. It was what we could call a “flex” in modern slang that all the kids use today. We will take a moment of Retrospect to My Favorite College Project.
It is the “Psychedelic Picture”! This project was the one that stands out to me the most, even after 9 years since I completed it. It wasn’t even a project that led to any direct monetary compensation. I can remember working on this like it was yesterday. I can even recall my early thoughts on it, the steps on how I made it, and the twists and turns that took place during its creation.
The project was assigned to my class, Digital Illustration during the winter quarter of my final 6 months at my college, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. *Side note: Because I get this mentioned to me anytime I refer to it, I will write about why The Art Institute of Pittsburgh closed and my thoughts on it next month. Anyhow, my teacher for the class Mr. Hassinger assigned us the project of doing a digital-based illustration using a person in it. We could choose any artistic style we wanted. I can remember how I wanted to go in a different direction, than my typical illustrative touch, which was primarily realistic with exact colors, shapes, proportions, and tones. I wanted to do something more experimental while maintaining the integrity of my style. I chose a classic psychedelic style. I knew it wouldn’t be easy and it would stretch my creative muscles, but that was the part of the challenge that motivated me the most.
First, I selected one of my friends from college to be my “model” for this project. I just had him sit in a chair in a studio at the school and use different poses. He gave me some great looks to choose from until I selected the seated position as he is in thought while holding on to something. I took that picture into photoshop and began playing with different filters and effects. I had completed some elements of the background while I was finalizing the colors and proportions of my model’s figure. At the same time, I opened up Adobe Illustrator and began digital sketching of shapes. This is where the tricky part of this assignment began. It was the fact that I was basically feeling my way throughout the project, with no clear direction on what the final product would look like. It was similar to being lost in a thicket in the woods, trying to feel your way to a particular destination. It had to be this way. This is an image that had to look like it wasn’t of this world, with little conscience coherence. And the best part of this whole thing is that there were absolutely no drugs involved in the making of this project (there’s my honest disclaimer).
At one point, I randomly took my “pen tool” in illustrator and started randomly clicking shapes and bam! I had come up with an uncommon shape. It was the rainbow-colored figured that kind of resembles DNA strand part. I took the shapes, multiplied them together, reversed the colors out on each link of the strands, pulled them into photoshop with my figure and the background, and began to create complex links all over the picture. It then dawned on me that the links need some source. I went back into Illustrator and created the plant-looking spouts along with a grainy green patch so make it look as if the strands were coming from the plants on this bar, appearing to reflect itself on a water-like surface but not at the same time. I had created something that was far outside my norm. Before I finalized it, I showed it to another friend of mine for a once-over critique. He loved it but did say it was still a little too clean to be pure psychedelic. He suggested some sort of parchment paper overlay with low opacity to make it look dirtier. I tried that idea and it worked. I feel even now it gives the viewer an even greater sense that they’re in some sort of dream.
I would’ve preferred to just use the picture itself as my final work of art, but when my teacher saw it, I realized I wasn’t done yet. He said, “How are you going to apply it?”. He meant, how would I use the image in a real-life setting. I then chose to use it on a magazine spread. It would be a fictitious article on the negative aspects of using LSD, hence the name “The Other Side of LSD”, under the cover of “Interpreted History as indicated in the top right corner. There it was. My work of art was complete and I aced that project with an A.
I have such a sentimental holding to my “Psychedelic Picture” not so much because of the grade I received, but because it pushed me beyond whatever creative limits I thought I had into another realm (no pun intended) where I realized I was capable of even more than initially thought. It was wild, out of the ordinary and a fun project to behold. I feel like I need to go back to this project periodically when I feel my creative energy is waning, just to be inspired and encouraged. There wasn’t a money incentive into this piece of art. It was purely and simply just about art. I would encourage anyone to do the same if there was a particular college project related to what they do now for a living that was their signature work of art. And that concludes my Retrospect: Favorite College Project.
Much Love
Joe Gardonis