I was given five random words arranged in seemingly unconnected groups. My task was to research informations about them and generate different visual ideas in order to create five images including all the pieces of data.
The five random words that I had to use to create my images were:
BOMBAY
LEMON YELLOW
PLASTERING
EUCLID
EUCLID
42
Every image that I composed is hardly connected to reality: I tried to link one image to the other by a unique dreamy feeling, a sensation of being transported in other different worlds.
BOMBAY:
The first image I made has as main concept “Bombay”: the viewer can easily see a young Indian lady on the left with typical Indian dress and jewels. The photo of the girl is taken from a Bollywood film scene: the Indian film industry is one of the largest centres of film production of the world based in the Indian city. Shades of lemon yellow are represented by the jewels of the lady.
The whole image has a background made of stars: the pattern realized by the stars connects the words 42 with Euclid: on the right of the woman you can see “Cygnus” (swan), a northern constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way. To symbolize the number 42 I found that one of the stars of this constellation is named “Kepler 42”: it’s a red dwarf star, one of the most common stars in Milky Way. On the other hand Euclid is represented by the entire universe by the reason that in 2020 a spacecraft named “Euclid” will be launched for a space mission in order to map the sky, observing two billions galaxies and find out why the expansion of universe is accelerating. Behind the entire image I used plastering as a scratched texture.
I mainly used colours adjustments, soft lights and I worked on the opacity so that all that all the images could melt quite well together.
LEMON YELLOW:
I decided to create one image that has as leading colour lemon yellow. In the centre you can easily see a land with a man and a robot sitting together watching the sun: this is a freeze-frame of the movie “The Hitchhicker’s guide to the galaxy”, a 2005 British-American comic science fiction film directed by Garth Jennings, based on the book of the same name by Douglas Adams. Throughout the course of the story a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought seven million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42.
On both two corners of the image I put my interpretations for Bombay and Euclid: on the right you can see a detail of Euclid statue based in Oxford University Museum of Natural History. On the other hand, on the left corner, you can see one of the most powerful photos made by the photographer Steve McCurry called “Beggar Girl, Bombay, India”. It shows a woman coming near his car window with her child begging for some money to get through the day. He took a photo of this moment thinking that it was a moment full of interesting meaning. I chose this image because I found that it shows the poor side of the Indian city.
I used once again plastering as texture: I chose Polished plaster, a term for new forms of traditional Italian plasters.
PLASTERING:
The main feeling that I had when I created this image was the feeling that I could touch the roughness of the plaster: the plaster that I chose is called “Venetian plaster”. It can be tinted, or colored using natural or synthetic colorants. The ability to tint Venetian plaster is especially helpful when a specific color of marble is desired, or when a color that does not exist naturally is wanted. For this reason I decide to make a kind of drawing on my third image, thinking about an hypothetical vinyl album cover. I chose Euclid’s theorem as a fundamental statement for numbers theories to create a kind of geometry on the image. Underneath of it I put a logo that stands for the number 42: in east Asia tall buildings often avoid having a 42nd floor because of tetraphobia, the fear of the number four because the words "four" and "death" sound the same (si or sei). Same as in Japanese culture, the number 42 is considered unlucky because the numerals when pronounced separately — "shi ni" (four two) — sound like the phrase, "unto death".
As background I chose a photo of The Imperial, a twin tower residential skycraper complex placed in Bombay. It is the tallest completed building in the country. Lemon yellow is present just in minimal stripes in the centre in the image, in the segment that connects the point A to the point B.
On this piece I worked a lot on the expousure, brightness and vibrance of the colours and again on the opacity
42
My fourth image has as main concept the number 42: Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has 42 illustrations. For this reason I chose an illustration from the book and I decided to make it more “dreamy” with the stars theme. Also in this one the color yellow is represented by the shades inside the image. Euclid is visible on the right where I added the detail of Euclid’s studies about “The Elements of Geometry” which includes definitions of terms and fundamental geometric principles. On the back I used again plaster as texture: this time I chose a simple kind of plaster: this material is usually used for coating walls and ceilings. Bombay is symbolized by the picture of the Holi Festival showing children having fun with colour powders. Holi is a spring festival also known as festival of colors, it is an ancient Hindu religious festival that celebrates the beginning of the new season and it commemorated good spring harvests and the fertile land.
In this image I tried to give a sense of joy and playful feeling: for this reason I thought that this image could be nice as a children book cover. As before, I mainly worked on brightness/contrast, colours adjustments, opacity, burn, dodge and lasso tools.
EUCLID:
In my fifth image I gave a different interpretation of the word Euclid: I found out that in Cleveland, Ohio there is street called “Euclid Avenue” where the subway service connects this area of the town with 168th street (so from Brooklin to Manhattan). For this reason I put the photo of this underground. On one of the yellow lemon columns I put the sign “42” as a hypothetical train platform. On the corner on the left I added a plaster statue , a huddled up person sitting on the floor. As textures I decided to use indian textiles from Bombay’s street markets.
Book and vinyl cover's examples:
