Hockney Style Joiners

How are David Hockney’s photomontages different from yours
B: Explain how images can send positive or negative messages
C: Describe the message you intend your audience to see (final)
Upload Images: School & Final Photomontage

Hello internet! After a wonderful three day weekend spent avoiding writing an essay until absolutely necessary and playing a ridiculous amount of Sims, I am back at school, enjoying the week or so of relief from report cards coming out. (4.0- Thank you very much) That leaves me just about two or three weeks until the stress of mid quarter progress reports. (The stress cycle continues) Yay school. Anyway, if you are a third year G.T student, and have been forced to read this since the beginning, (Sorry) then you probably have seen my old post about photomontages. Not to mention the fact that you probably did that project. Also if you are a G.T student, you know that we are doing photomontages again. If you are not a G.T student, and have no clue what I am talking about, then I will try to explain as best I can later in this post, and I'll probably link to someone who can explain it better than I can. I'll also link to that first post about photomontages, so we can all enjoy the lackluster and humorless writing (ramblings) of young fetus Maddie. Enjoy!

To start off, lets give a quick explanation of photomontages. A photomontage is basically a picture created through the assembling of several overlapping images. If you've heard of David Hockney, a British artist, then you might have seen some of his work. He was actually the creator of photomontages, first called joiners. I'll link below to some of his work. There are a few differences between his work and the photomontages we are doing here at KMS. For one, because of the limitations of technology at the time, his art is done by hand, carefully placing every photo. Our photomontages are put together in Photoshop, all editing and assembling done digitally. We've done two photomontages, not counting the little practice one. One was a portrait done here at school, (Can you guess who?) and the other of a meaningful subject at home. Of course the only reasonable subject was my cat. Meow.

Now that you have a basic understanding of our project and the whole concept of photomontages, let's move on to images and symbolism.

Images are powerful things, and can send messages without words. Whether that message is positive or negative depends on the artist or creator. When you view an image that strongly portrays an emotion or a message, you feel it. Certain things cause different reactions for different people, but a great piece of art makes you feel something. That's what I believe the meaning of art is- something that makes you feel something, whether it be music, pictures, paintings, etc. Everyone is different, so everyone might have a different reaction to things. Artists often have deeper meanings to their work- that's what makes them great artists.

For my final piece, I am using my cat as a subject. When I am finished, I want my piece to portray some of the feelings I get from being around animals, specifically my own. I feel safest and happiest when I'm in my house, and it wouldn't be the same without my cats there. It's the best feeling when you're lying in bed and a cat jumps up and sits on your feet. Unless if you were allergic to cats. Then it probably wouldn't be the best feeling. In all seriousness though, the goal of my final piece is to showcase the feelings of quiet happiness, of calm, of the quiet life cats lead, outside the rat race of humanity. Or it will look like an orange cat exploded on a black background. Depends on the eye of the viewer I suppose. We'll see.

So, to wrap things up, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed. Check out the links below, to a site that explains photomontages a lot better than I do, a lovely post that will likely bring on a serious cringe attack, and some examples of David Hockney's work. Seriously though, I just reread my old photomontage post. There are actual shudders running down my spine. I will never be the same. Anyways, sorry the actual content part of this post is a little shorter than it usually is, turned out to be a really long week, and I find it slightly harder to over achieve when I'm exhausted and stressed. Who would've known? Any who, check out the links below, thanks for reading, etc, and have a wonderful day!

(PSSST- links)

• What even is a photomontage?
• Fetus Maddie. (I actually really like my old Photomontage. Huh. The writing, not so much.)
• The lovely David Hockney