Project #1 - Zine and Artist Statement

Artist Statement:

My goal with this project was to create a visual narrative that encompassed feelings and emotions that I have personally experienced in my own life. In Grayscale, the visual narrative follows the main character of a butterfly that is solely black and white. The butterfly feels as though it sticks out compared to the beautifully colorful butterflies that it's surrounded by. Due to this, the butterfly goes on a journey to gain color in the form of paint, but it eventually gets washed off leaving the butterfly to go back to its natural state of being black and white. Yet, the butterfly ultimately comes to love its natural color and accept themselves for who they are. With this story I wanted to encompass the larger idea that uniqueness makes a person who they are and that one's looks don't define them. I think this concept is very important to understand as body image and appearance can have negative impacts on many people, especially young girls. Some challenges I faced with this project was finding images that could correlate with the theme of my project. I also really had to push myself to space out the images day by day to be able to complete the project in a timely manner. For my process, with each image I would initially trace and create my main character butterfly in Illustrator. Then I would collage the background/setting that the butterfly would be placed into in Photoshop. Eventually I would then combine both elements by putting the butterfly into the Photoshop collage to create my finalized images. Something that went really well for me was the use of Illustrator and creating all of the main character butterfly images. I thought it was a really fun tool to use and my final butterflies turned out really well. There is not too much that I would change for next time, I thought my final project turned out really well and I feel as though I conveyed my concept for the project in a very clear way.