Title: Preoccupied
Size: 22 x 18 in
Medium: Photography
Competition: March 2024
Inspired by photographer Russell Hart, "Preoccupied" demonstrates how our work life can prevent us from connecting to people who we value but are physically far away from us. Our work is right in front of us, and it becomes a priority in our lives while our relationships with loved ones become neglected.
Size: 22 x 18 in
Medium: Photography
Competition: March 2024
Inspired by photographer Russell Hart, "Preoccupied" demonstrates how our work life can prevent us from connecting to people who we value but are physically far away from us. Our work is right in front of us, and it becomes a priority in our lives while our relationships with loved ones become neglected.
Inspiration
My Mother's Desk, As She Left It by Russell Hart
Russel Hart is a photographer that captures an assortment of pictures that range from wildlife to architecture and people. The earliest gallery on her website consists of a series of photographs of her mother's home that her mother had inhabited for over forty years. Her mother suffered from dementia and depression after Russell Hart's father died. When it became Hart's responsibility to take care of her mother and clean her old house, she was met with an overwhelming cluster of disorganized belongings. Russel Hart shares pictures of the crowded environment that shows the long term effect of the depression of her mother. She states that the constant reminders of her mother's suffering distressed her, and as a coping mechanism, she photographed the several clustered rooms. The more Russell Hart organized the more she discovered personal artifacts, which she says is when she felt she found herself, at the very bottom of a massive hoarding pile. The vast majority of the photographs taken are in black and white. The contrast of the light whites and dark blacks captivates the viewer and makes them examine the most intense areas. Russell Hart explains that the photographs are in black and white to ensure that the colors do not serve as a distraction to the chaotic hoard.
Planning
My intention with the final photograph is to show how community changes as we age. I want to show the community that were are physically closer to can become a priority over other communities we are physically further away from, such as family.
The first sketch that I planned was a layout of my desk with a couple of picture of my grandmother that was going to be further in the background, while objects that show other communities would be close to the foreground. The objects in the foreground would be a sketchbook, which would represent an artistic community, people I share interests with, my phone with messages from friends, and tickets from a school dance to show how I am physically closer to friends from school. These would all represent how I am more focused on these aspects of my life rather than my distant family in Mexico. When I presented my idea to Jason Yi I recieved feedback on how to improve my idea. He said that he liked the idea, but that the face of my grandma should be the focus, instead of what was being ignored.
To further emphasize the idea of me missing my grandma, Jason Yi suggested that I make a drawing of her in my sketchbook, to show how I feel internally, while at the same time showing my interest in art. He also said that I should make the desk more crowded, instead of having just a few items at the front, which do not tell much of a story. After that I planned how I would set up my photo again by making another sketch. I drew my desk from a different angle, further away than before to capture a bigger scene. I drew my sketchbook in the middle because I was not sure what I wanted to crowd it with, but I knew what I wanted to draw in my sketchbook. I planned to have a single colored drawing of my grandma on the left side of a page, and have smaller colorless drawings on the right side of a page.
The last thing I needed were reference photos of my grandma, so I reached out to her and told her about my project. She sent me a couple of photos, of physical photographs she had of herself. I planned to use the more recent photograph of herself for the bigger colored drawing, because I wanted the bigger drawing to be an image of her that was how I remembered her in person.
Process
The first thing I drew was the larger picture of my grandma. Using the loomis method as a guide I drew a circle and the outline of the jaw first. Then I used the eyebrow and mouth guide to draw the eyebrows and mouth first. After that I drew the rest of the features like the eyes, nose, and hair. I did not add much detail to the drawing with pencil because I did not want the paint to become murky with grey. I felt discouraged because I felt that I did not draw the features of my grandma correctly, but it was hard to do so from the reference picture. I started painting anyway just to see if adding color would make it look better. The first thing I painted was the hair, because that had the least amount of value in color compared to the rest of the face. I began painting it a light brown, just to see if the paper of my sketchbook would be a good surface to paint on. For this painting I used acrylic paints diluted with water. I saw that it held up very well so I continued to darken her hair with brown and then finished it with brown and black.
Then I painted the face. This was the most difficult part because there were many values of colors that I had to layer on top of each other on paper, with thick paint and water, so I had to wait a bit between each layer. I made the base of the skin tone by mixing yellow with red and white, adding more yellow and white than red. After that I used burnt umber to mix it with the base color to create the shadows on the neck and on the face on the right side. Blending the light and dark values evenly was tricky because creating a smooth transition between the dark and light values required me to use a lot of water to make a smooth transition. Sometimes the water made the previous layer of paint peel off from the paper and so I had to use more paint to cover it up. When I was at the stage of painting the picture on the left, I felt that something else was missing (apart from the obvious lack of color in the mouth and eyes), and realized that it was the pink/red values in her face. When I painted those values on the colors looked more natural and it fixed the gray color on the right cheek. Then I added burnt umber to red paint, mixed it, and painted the lips with it, adding white to paint the lighter values on the left. Then I used dark brown for the eyes, black from the pupils, and to complete it, a dot of thick white paint to add life to the eyes.
The next drawing I had to draw were two other pictures of my grandma that she sent me. I decided to keep these black and white because one, the original pictures were in black and white and two, because I wanted the larger of my painting of my grandma to stand out not only because of the size, but because of the colors as well. This has to do with the reason that the way I remember her was like the painting on the left. But the process for drawing the other two pictures was almost the same. With this first picture, I again used the loomis method to draw a circle and a jawline. Then I drew the mouth, eyebrows, eyes, and hair and shaded them with a pencil. To shade the skin, I used a cotton swab to blend the darker values and pressed lightly when it came to lighter grey values. To shade the hair I used a different kind of pencil that was thicker and darker.
The second drawing was the same process as the first. I drew the head and added the features. I shaded the eyes, eyebrows, and nose with a pencil because they were much smaller compared to the tip of the cotton swab. Then I used the cotton swab to color in the darker areas first such as the neck, nose, eyelids, and the sides of the face that were close to the hair. Lastly I used a different kind of pencil to color in the hair.
The picture on the top shows the final result of my sketchbook filled out with a painting and two drawings of my grandma. I am mostly proud of the painting over the drawings but I appreciate the piece as a whole because it shows pictures of my grandma that I had never seen before.
Experimentation
This was the first picture that I took of my crowded desk. I placed the sketchbook on the top left side of the desk and surrounded it with other materials that I would use for school. To make it almost as chaotic as Russell's work, I crumpled up pieces of paper that was just old homework and notes. Some other materials that I added were pencils and a compass and a water bottle. This was the photo I showed Jason Yi and got feedback. He said I should move the sketchbook so that the drawing of my grandma would be looking at the pile of work, instead of the wall. The other piece of advice that he gave me was to crowd the sketchbook up more with some of my schoolwork, instead of conveniently leaving the sketchbook perfectly uncovered. This would show how overwhelmed I am with my work that it distracts me from distant family.
Process
After I made the rearrangements I tried again to photograph the desk. This time I moved the desk so that the background would be white instead of blue, because it was too distracting. I also removed the items on the right side of the desk because they had nothing to do with the meaning of the piece. All that was left to do was to take a high quality image. I changed the megapixel setting on my phone from 12 to 50 to increase the quality, and then took more pictures.
I stood on a chair to capture the entirety of my desk. This made it a bit difficult to take good pictures because the chair would move as I was trying to center the desk and align it properly. The pictures above were taken with 12 megapixels before I changed it to 50, and so I had to keep taking more photos.
This was the final photograph, cropped and aligned. The megapixel setting was up to 50 so the quality was better. The lighting was less dramatic which I think works in its favor because it is not supposed to be a warm environment, it looks somewhat gloomy.
Critique
The set up of Russell Hart's photo and my own is similar. The messy desk and repetition of paper all over the desk is similar, as they both create overwhelming and crowded environments that make the viewer look at all the objects that are on the desk. The angle of the photo is somewhat similar, because the focus of the photo is the desk and its chaotic mess.
The most notable difference between my photo and Russell Hart's is the color. My photograph uses color because I wanted the piece to feel more modern, as opposed to Hart's piece that feels more antique like a documentary. My grandmother is still alive and doing well so taking a photograph in black and white would create a gloomier mood. Russell's Hart photograph also shows more of the messy room by allowing the viewer to see more of the floor, unlike my photo, where the desk is the only thing the viewer sees. I did this because the rest of the room does not add any more meaning to the message that I want to convey.
The most notable difference between my photo and Russell Hart's is the color. My photograph uses color because I wanted the piece to feel more modern, as opposed to Hart's piece that feels more antique like a documentary. My grandmother is still alive and doing well so taking a photograph in black and white would create a gloomier mood. Russell's Hart photograph also shows more of the messy room by allowing the viewer to see more of the floor, unlike my photo, where the desk is the only thing the viewer sees. I did this because the rest of the room does not add any more meaning to the message that I want to convey.
Reflection
I feel content with this piece. It allows me to tell a more personal story while still maintaining universal themes of neglected relationships and family. I feel like I exercised my painting and drawing skills when I had to recreate the pictures that my grandma sent me. Painting on paper with acrylic is not something I would do regularly, but learning to accurately recreate the color and shadows in faces is something I will use again. The process of painting the large image of my grandma was actually my favorite part, because I Another thing that I improved on was my photography skills, as I had to pay attention to detail such as lighting, space, and the angle a photo is taken from. The biggest challenges were deciding how to crowd the sketchbook and actually taking pictures of the desk as a whole. I did not have a solid idea on what objects I could use to show that I was overwhelmed with work, and I stood in an awkward position when I was trying to take the picture, so a lot of the pictures came out blurry and crooked.
ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- The crowded and disorganized desk inspired me to create an exaggerated version of my own.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The author explains how the depression of Russell Hart's mother affected her, and that taking photographs was her way of dealing with the pain.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- Overwhelmed people can forget the value of those they love.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
-Busy environments.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
-Depression affects more than a single person over time.
Bibliography:
https://russellhartphoto.com/my-mothers-house-1
Photographer Russell Hart | Streetlight Magazine. 1 Sept. 2023, streetlightmag.com/2023/09/01/photographer-russell-hart/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2024.