My sustained investigation question was, "What would mental illnesses look like if people could see what others were suffering and dealing with?" I wanted to utilize my artwork to spread awareness about the growth of the mental health issue of social anxiety, which is a heavy burden on those who suffer from it, especially teenagers. To begin my project, I started with a sketch to provide a base of what I wanted my artwork to look like, and this sketch consisted of a teenage girl, a blur of people walking by, scribbles to represent her anxiety, and a dark background.

After I made my sketch, I searched for a rights free image of a teenage girl who is visibly suffering from an anxiety attack. I did this so I could illustrate the feeling of social anxiety from within because most people don't outwardly show their anxiousness at it's full extent. Social anxiety is a major mental health issue that has overwhelmed and overcame loads of teenagers and with Covid-19 and the continuous separation of people from others has only worsened the toll it takes these victims. Once I found a picture of a girl that I thought best fit my vision, I placed a layer mask on the image, used the soft brush with the hardness level at 100%, and masked over all the areas that weren't her because I wanted to insert my own background. 

To start it to resemble the social anxiety experienced by the teenage girl, I wanted to find an image of a crowd walking but in a blur. I wanted them to be in a blur to resemble how  social anxiety drowns out everything going around the person by unleashing the self-consciousness and fears within that consumes their thoughts and distracts them from living in the moment. When the fears take over it disconnects the person from others and pushes them away from making connections and fulfilling friendships which I thought people walking by in a blur would illustrate exactly. 

Once I found an image of a blurred crowd I liked, I placed it, but there was a woman in the way. To fix this, I placed a layer mask on the image, used the soft brush with the hardness level at 0%, and masked over the woman. Then I made multiple copies of this image and then masked over all areas besides the white with some splotches of color. I then moved these layers around and adjusted the sizing to fit them in particular places to represent the spotlight effect I take about in the next paragraph. Then to finish it off I grouped these layers together and changed the overlay to overlay to make them blend to gather better.

For the background, I wanted to place an image of a dark empty wall with a spotlight. I did this because those who have social anxiety feel that in social situations all eyes are on them and that people are judging their every move, so I wanted to portray this crushing feeling through a spotlight. I also wanted to extract the tone of embarrassment and humiliation so I adjusted the color balance, hue, and saturation of the background image. I changed the color balance and hue to red tones and had the saturation high to represent "red cheeks" when someone gets embarrassed. 

Then, I adjusted the teenager because in her original image she looked dull, and I also wanted to convey her emotions through her with colors as well. I changed the color balance toward a more orange, yellow, and red ones to make the same "red cheeks" effect and I again made the saturation level higher to accentuate the new color blend. 

Then I put the eye back on the blurred crowd so that it would show on top of the wall but behind the teenage girl. I wasn't satisfied with the colors exhibited by the crowd on the wall even with the adjustments I made on the background so I made some more adjustments. I  changed the saturation level way higher and made the color balance have more red and orange tones while also keeping individual pops of colors. I still wasn't satisfied so I went back to the overlay of the blurred image and changed it to vivid light. To make the spotlight make sense, I used the stamp tool with the soft edge, captured the areas of the white, and stamped it on the areas on the floor that touched the spotlight on the wall. 

When people suffer from social anxiety, jumbled thoughts are created from anxiety produced by the overthinking of little everything. I wanted to display the crushing feeling of defeat and the teenage girls anxiety through scribbles to show the scrambled brain. So, I searched and found an image from the internet of scribbles I wanted to put around the teenage girl because this projects focus is to expose what social anxiety looks like from within, and this shows the anxiety felt within. I then placed a layer mask on the image, used the soft brush with the hardness level at 100%, and masked over all the girl and only kept the scribbles. Then I changed the overlay of the image to hard light and then I went back in on the mask and used the soft brush with the soft edge on the areas I didn't want to have the scribbles overtop of. I then made copies of this layer and fit it around the girl until I made the desired shape around the girl. 

Now that the scribbles made the spotlight have a yellow ton I wanted to give the spotlight light on the ground have the color disposition. So I then made a new layer and moved it to the top. I then color selected a bright yellow from the colors displayed by the scribbles above, selected the soft brush tool with a soft edge, and began brushing on the color overtop of the spotlight on the ground. Then I changed the overlay to saturation so that it blended well into the ground. I also wanted to portray the feeling of loneliness and I decided I wanted to achieve this goal by adding darkness encircling the girl. This added an ominous and dreary effect, and it put further emphasis on the girl and her experiencing social anxiety.

To finish it off, I rechanged the overlay of the layer of yellow overtop of the ground to overlay because I thought it fit the color scheme of my project better. Then I needed to add the girls shadow. To do this I color selected a dark and deep orange, changed the brush opacity to 40% and the hardness level to 0%, and brushed behind the image of the girl. Then I made a new layer, kept the brush settings, and added some shadows over some parts of the girl to make her look less displaced.