Fish Bowl

 "As a social value, transparency suggests clarity and directness" (Lupton, Graphic Design)

Manipulated Nature

I struggled with this week's idea of transparency quite a bit -- I'd open the syllabus and close it day after day because I had no clue how to tackle this. I've never manipulated transparency in my art, consciously at least! I'm familiar with layering, but the transparency part really had me stumped. I looked through the myriad of examples in the book -- no spark. I talked to some friends and did some searching on Pinterest and still -- nothing. Nothing would spark for me and I need a spark to feel confident in sharing my art, so I gave up momentarily. I really felt like this week's blog post was above me until it hit me...

Aside from my deep burning passion for art, I'm also a biologist -- a marine biologist if we are getting specific. I remembered how these beautiful bodies of water have variations of water clarity affected by nutrient loading from the soil around it. Some lakes are not as clear while some are crystal clear -- meters and meters of visibility in their depths. That's when it hit me -- I can make these two passions of mine intersect for this week's art which the book really made me realize. The connection between clarity and transparency spoke to me. I was so ecstatic.

I launched Procreate on my iPad, as per usual, and added this beautiful image of Mary Lake -- the sunlight refracting off of it, the clarity of the water, the grass kissing the water. It's just so beautiful, but how do I make this my own? I duplicated the image of Mary Lake about 4 times and added one clear layer underneath all those layers. I airbrushed some shades of yellow for the fish silhouette and added a baby pink for the bubbles and my Instagram tag. Then, I "erased" the first Mary Lake layer above my colored layer to create the fish silhouette. Now, the fun part was adjusting the opacity of the three remaining layers of Mary Lake and resizing them for layering and transparency. I wanted to make the layering and transparency meaningful in some way in relation to our fish friend.

I added gradual opacity from 47%, 40%, and 31% progressing from the layers beneath to above. I resized them to add gradual framing around the fish and bubbles loosely, then a little more compact, and the third layer frames the fish -- excluding the bubbles. The effect this had on the grass and reflection in the image overall looked very beautiful to me. I am very happy with how this turned out and I'm happy to report -- the spark is very present in "manipulated nature".

As always, click the image to be re-directed to its respective post on my Instagram. I've also got exciting news -- I've created a Patreon which I've hyperlinked here. Patreon is a platform where you get to support my independence as a creative and getting exclusive rewards and perks for supporting me there for as low as $3/month. I appreciate any support you'd like to provide me! Thanks for reading!