Art by Laurel

JAMAICA! A bucket list dream come true! Journal entries + layering + a beautiful place.

Reminiscing on a beautiful, warm summer, with even warmer people. Warm memories.

Making this image, I was reminiscing on a beach trip I took last year, full of laughter, beauty, good food, good people, and falling in love. To make this image, I drew in my journal, then took a picture of it and layered it on top of a photo from the trip, playing with the blending mode.

Happy pride!

For this blog, I wanted to something more personal. I tend to live in my head, constantly having inner monologues with myself about everything and nothing. Lately, I've tended to store them in there, letting every script rot in filing cabinets deep within the depths of my mind. Well, I'm tired of that. So here are a collection of some of the thoughts I have, even the scary ones, or ones I don't want to accept.

The first photo came from one of many parkway drives in Boone - imagine Frank Ocean playing, the windows all the way down, a car full of friends and laughter. The texture comes from my best friend Hannah's doodles, inspired by a recent break-up and Eat Pray Love. The second photo came from when I lived in Chapel Hill, and on a particularly sad day decided to ditch everything and drive until I found somewhere beautiful. I came upon Lake Jordan in literally the middle of nowhere, which brought all the peace I needed. Overtop, another Hannah doodle- love is everything. The third photo was on a trip to Asheville, when I came upon a man who was sitting and writing poems for anyone who wanted one, about anything. I had him write me a poem about coincidences, which is what I used for texture. The poem and the moment was beautiful. To make all of these images, I basically just rotated every texture piece, cropped both the images together to make it fit, played with the opacity ...

In contemporary times, everyone uses some type of Photoshop in one way or another. Whether it's adding a filter, creating something that couldn't exist otherwise, or just removing a blemish, everyone is guilty of touching up an imagine one way or another. While image retouching is seemingly harmless, I can see how it can become problematic at times. The unceasing editing of the bodies of already thin models can subconsciously promote body image issues, insecurity, and a wack view of beauty standards. While an explicit note that Photoshop was used on an image can be helpful, it seems somewhat overkill when it's pretty common sense advertisements and practically every image you see has been edited in some way or another. Living in an increasingly technological world, Photoshop and digital retouching is only getting more popular. Above all, Photoshop is a type of artform and labels or warnings only seem to stifle the message.

You see, dreams don't  specifically have to happen when you're sleeping. You can spend your entire day dreaming if you wanted to. The dreams we have at night are generally uncontrollable, random things, which you don't actually remember when you wake up. But what about the dreams we have everyday, about our future, our love, our career, where we want to be in ten years? I spend most of my days living in my head, daydreaming about a million things. The inspiration for this photo set came from someone I used to dream of. You know, the being in love, thinking a thousand things a day about the future you could have together type thing . On the way to her house, I would pass by this home that at first glace, I could see my next 20 years spent alongside the love of my life, adopting dogs, lake days, pool parties, sledding down the big hill. I wanted to take a picture of it then, as a physical representation of what I was working towards, a visual of hope and safety. ...

In this piece of artwork, called "Underworld" by Manic Minotaur, the artist combines many different colors and patterns in an overall busy piece. I was drawn to this picture because of the psychedelic look, along with a heavy use of primary colors. Yellow almost always sticks out to me, and it's vibrant use here, everywhere in the midst of the madness, catches my eye. Scott Nellis, with the artist name Manic Minotaur, resides in the United Kingdom. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Illustration at the University of Brighton in 2009, and has created many pieces since. Starting with highly detailed black and white drawings with a Rotring pen, Nellis has transitioned to work with vibrant colors, a mixture of pens and Photoshop, and a wider range of mediums. https://www.hireanillustrator.com/i/portfolio/manic-minotaur/