My Life As Seen Through My Phone Vol. III: A Retrospective
The Prompt: Each month I’ll photograph whatever inspires and grabs me. Then at the end of the month, I’ll select a single image and create a mixed media piece from it. I’ll post this finalized piece with any comments or notes about the process or inspiration.
2. My Life As Seen Through My Phone | Volume III
The Results:
January 2015
February 2015
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
June 2015
July 2015
August 2015
October 2015
November 2015
December 2015
The Experience:
Of all the challenges I gave myself last year, this was the hardest one to fully complete. In the first few months I really married the idea of mixed media as only a piece included print AND digital materials. That isn’t the case.
Mixed Media is defined as, “the use of a variety of media in an entertainment or work of art.”*
Once I opened up the boundaries of print AND digital, my works from this challenge took on a more experimental and educational bent. In the end, I really enjoy seeing the transition these pieces took througout the year.
In the earlier months you see my attempt to recreate scenes from everyday life using various different techniques from pen to digital rendering to sewing string into paper.
In the middle of the year I started working on a variety of freelance projects that required me to refresh and expand my knowledge of taking sketches into Illustrator and creating vector graphics. Constantly working on my illustration through my computer took this challenge into a more digitally graphic direction as I wanted to create pieces that aligned with all I was learning as well as what I wanted to experiment with personally.
Finally at the end of the year I got a brand new Wacom tablet that I was trying to get acclimated with and so I decided to draw some digital works. These still adhered to the original challenge as I started each of them with a photograph from my daily life.
Overall this project helped inspired me to experiment more, to give myself the freedom to try new things and mix different medias together. I do think in my next year challenges I need to define the challenge with a little more clarity while still not pigeonholing the potential works.