COM 222 Portfolio

Unit 2: Stop Motion

My stop motion film depicts a fisherman being dragged into the water by a fish caught on his line. I added sound effects such as birds, grunts, and a water splash to match the scenery and the subject's actions. I took multiple pictures of my subject in different positions and then clipped the pictures together to create the illusion of movement.

Title: What Lies Beneath the Sea?

Unit 4: Visual Elements & Principles (Part 2)

My composition is an abstract self-portrait from the chest up on A4 size paper. The geometric shapes on my chest area are painted with complementary colors to make the artwork more vibrant while still invoking harmony. The colorful chest area contrasts with the colorless hair on the top of my head. The hair is made of repeating curving lines and a dark to light value gradient. I added four braids to the left side of the head and used diagonal lines to mimic the texture of the braids. I then added an earring to the right side to maintain the weight balance and create informal symmetry. The earring represents my Ethiopian culture and the traditional Maasai head jewelry represents my Kenyan culture.

Title: Cubic Experimentation

Unit 5: Motifs

Title: Complemtary Bugs

I collaborated with Mia Hilton and Lizzie Young to create this motif project. We decided to draw insects on top of a newspaper background. We also decided to make the insects and the plants be complementary colors.

Lizzie's bug

My bug

Mia's bug

Unit 6: Conceptual Photography

A large percentage of teens feel like they are addicted to their screens and with that addiction comes overexposure to blue light. This exposure often leads to problems with sleeping, eyesight, and mental health. My conceptual photo depicts a blue light emitting from a computer screen and shining on a fatigued teen boy. The blue arm reaching for the subject’s face is a personification of the harmful effects of blue light. The implied lines of the light shining from the laptop screen separate the dark surroundings from the illuminated teen subject. This communicates that my concept is centered around teenagers due to their heightened risk. The different values of blue help create depth and highlight in my picture. Moreover, the color blue symbolizes feelings of sadness or depression. This emphasizes the negative mental health effects technology overuse has on teens.

Title: Blue Light Overexposure

Unit 7: Creative Self

This creative self-portrait is a piece I created back in unit four. However, the chest area is now filled with a collage of different childhood memories and people. The collage makes the piece a more personal and accurate representation of myself. I drew two different hairstyles on my portrait because as a black girl I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my hair. The dark to light value on my natural hair represents the gradual progression I’ve had with loving my hair. However, I also enjoy experimenting with other hairstyles such as braids. The earring represents my Ethiopian culture and how I take pride in it. The traditional Maasai head jewelry represents the Kenyan culture due to its large presence in my life. Lastly, I made my eyes two different shapes because I think my eyes are two different sizes sometimes so I hyperbolized that feeling.

Title: Abstract Self-Reflection

Unit 9: Time-Based Media & Video Production

My 5-shot sequence video tells the story of a boy trying to find his missing friend. The video lacks music in order to communicate the lonely and ominous feeling within the room. The video is also in black and white to continue the dark and dramatic theme of the story. The first shot reveals hands typing on a laptop and the second shot introduces the audience to a stone-faced boy. The third and fourth shots reveal the story by showing the polaroids and personal belongings of the missing girl. The over-the-shoulder shot then shows the boy working on a missing poster for the girl. The last two shots show a clock ticking and the boy getting frustrated with how long this has taken him.

Title: Missing For Too Long

Final Project

Title: Dye-ing To Be White

The title of my piece is “Dye-ing To Be White” as shown in the middle of my composition. The intended purpose of my piece is to raise awareness for the skin-lightening problem that has persisted in Africa for decades. Lighter skin, due to the racial ranking of the colonial era, became a symbol of varying levels of beauty and privilege. As a result, the lighter an African women’s skin is, the closer she is to the beauty standards held within African society. This negatively affects thousands of dark-skinned women’s self-esteem, perceptions of beauty, and economic opportunities. Therefore, my intended audience for this project is African women who think they need to bleach their skin to fit in with these beauty standards.

In the research I did for this project, I found statistics compiled by the World Health Organization in 2011 showed that 40% of African women bleach their skin. However, the World Health Organization warns that skin bleaching can cause liver and kidney damage, psychosis, brain damage in fetuses, and cancer. Moreover, contemporary skin-bleaching creams are warned to have chemicals that cause side effects such as dermatitis (skin irritation), blue-black discoloration, and even blindness. Dark-skinned women are going to great lengths to meet these standards despite the harm it does to them, as implied by my title.

The creative process for this project began when I was doing one of my weekly journals. In one of my pages, I drew a young African girl who had bleached her skin due to the pressures she felt to fit the beauty standards of her home. I took this idea and modified it to fit a larger project. I drew out different ways to present my message and then took a break to let my ideas sink in and develop. I then became making my project in which I chose to make a four-part watercolor painting series. Each painting is 11.7 x 16.5 inches and contains the outline of the four edges of Africa (West, North, East, South). I then used the continent outline to create a section of skin in which a dark-skinned woman had bleached her skin. I did this to communicate the integral part African society plays in making these women feel the need to bleach their skin.

Moreover, I painted the portrait of the women in an abstract and asymmetrical way to symbolize the distorted sense of beauty these women have developed due to these beauty standards. I researched the popular colors and styles of fabric made in each area and combined that information to paint the fabric found within each area. I then added the message of “All Skin Tones Are Beautiful” running across all the sections. I did this to celebrate the rich and beautiful cultures of Africa and how black women should embrace and accept those rich and beautiful parts of themselves in order to lead a successful and fulfilling life. I combined my four paintings in InDesign to construct the whole continent. I then added the ocean background to give the feel of viewing the image as a map and then added my title in the center of the continent. I think my strengths within my project are originality and application of aesthetic principles but will need to improve on production value as I did this project with low-quality materials.