My experience in art – I have been working on art for as long as I can remember. Almost like it’s in my blood. From primary school, I was always that weirdly artsy kid, and even had one of my sculptures on display at the Royal Melbourne Show. I’ve had contemporary jewellery pieces and drawings in high school art shows/exhibitions, from year eight through to year twelve (Incinerator Gallery was the main exhibition space). My contemporary jewellery design was also featured on the flyer, for the year twelve exhibition (2013). I have had my works featured in a university art show last year, and currently, I freelance as a designer and artist outside of university (tattoo designs, band album covers and t-shirts). I don’t see myself doing anything else. Here is one of my most recent pencil drawings:

What digital art means to me – I’m not going to lie, digital art hasn’t always been my favourite. I have used and created works digitally in the past, but have never seen digital art as being my medium of choice when it comes to creating my pieces. I am usually one to pick up a pencil and paper or a pair of pliers to create something. In saying this, I have always been fascinated with how much can be done on a computer, and how images and concepts can be so easily distorted with the click of a button… or a few buttons. I guess it’s worth another shot hey!

What I hope to get from this course – I am hoping to learn how to digitalize my work, in particular, my drawings. Thus, enabling me to edit and distort the image however I like, without ruining or messing with the original piece (a mistake I’ve made way too many times). Learning to draw at a more advanced level, especially in Adobe Illustrator, will assist in designs that I make (t-shirts, album covers etc).

Topics – I am going to focus on the ‘Lost and Found’ concept; particularly highlighting the idea of lost identities and how refugees sacrifice all of their identity and worth when fleeing a country. I would like to incorporate images of lost paperwork, and people losing their faces throughout my folio to further highlight the concept. For the video. I am thinking about creating a series of images and shots of people’s backs, that will be blurred, with the sound of screaming and loud chatter in another language laid over the top. I think the sounds over the top will illustrate the distress involved in the whole situation, and will spark emotion in my audience.  Another idea was to incorporate fingerprints, perhaps layering them over the top of portraits, showing the fingerprint to be engraving one’s face when they look in the mirror, to highlight the notion that no matter what paperwork or physical identification is lost, that an individual will never lose their sense of self. I found these ideas pretty rad after some research, and thought I’d share:

Links: Lost Identity Wallpaper (#23434), wallpapersinhq, viewed 1 March 2016 <http://wallpapersinhq.pw/23434-lost_identity/>

Tomasz Alen Kopera 2015, Items of Inspiration tumblr, viewed 1 March 2016 <http://sillyfig.tumblr.com/post/85289795077/pachipachiworld-lost-identity-by-tomasz-alen>

Ollyy, Shuttershock, viewed 1 March 2016 <http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-160669p1.html>