Foldscopes and 403: Round 2 of Images

So it's been awhile - I am gonna be playing catch up for a bit, if I'm being honest. But the next blog posts will be about process for my 403 series :)

The first image I took on was a shot of my hair follicle:

It was one of the first snapshots I took with my Foldscope and contained a LOT of information. I wanted to focus on the colors and line quality of the follicle and the light sources. I started with the white of the paper and utilized color blocking to plan the composition.

Each image had its own separate color palettes.

The first image ended up resembling a tree... no, it ended up as a tree. Either way, I was not pleased with the final result and moved on to the next image. 

Treeeee.....not what I wanted.

Spit (saliva) was the next experiment! Think kisses and not drooling ;)

Each photograph was so vastly different from the other and I really feel weird bragging about how good my spit looked under a microscope.. but whatever.

almost looks like the moon!

This was a challenging image because of all the little speckles and bubbles that carried through the space. I wanted to preserve the transparency of the bubbles and light flecks and emphasize the textures so I focused on highlights and creating depth. If I were to do this one again I would add some darker hues to the bottom of the image and work into those bubbles more!

one spit disco ball...

The second image was a snapshot of something a little more invasive: Snot! I created a slide with my own boogers (nasal mucus, sorry) and took a snapshot of it through the scope. 

the final product before matting and framing

After a helpful suggestion from my professor I started this drawing with a colored ground. After some experimenting I decided on a warm yellow-orange hue to offset the greys and blues of the...snot haha! I wanted to focus on the different light reflections from the scope and also the very slight shadows from the liquid sitting on the slide. 

The next few images were of a separate subject: a blackhead. One of the best things about this project was the abundance of subject matter. The human body is just a walking biology project, after all. Whether the product from the body is positive or negative adds a whole other component to the conversation. I woke up one day with a monster-sized blackhead due to stress and (turn away, you weak stomachs) it popped so I put the skin onto a slide and started taking pictures. When the skin sample was pressed between the plastic, it began to thin out and take up more space..

the edge of the skin

the 'black' of the blackhead

As anyone knows.. a blackhead is the result of a blocked pore in the skin's surface. The amount of color information in the snapshot allowed me to really emphasize the translucency of the skin and the different changes in hue from the top to the bottom of the sample. As I found in other images, many of the subjects were very painterly in quality and appearance. I think the pastel emphasized that aspect of the images and allowed me to experiment with line and color blocking. I started this image with a yellow background and worked my way around the border into the center. I wanted to keep the blurriness and softness of the outer edges so I did not blend them as much with the other hues.

These next few photographs were some of my favorites throughout the creation of the series. The samples were taken from (weak stomachs..) cervical mucus. One of the big things I realized during this process was that some of the products I collected and made samples of were unique to being a woman. I am very comfortable with my body and wanted to focus on as many parts of the body systems as possible. We cannot talk about being a woman without talking about what fundamentally makes a woman.. or the traditional concept of a woman anyway. I won't get political here. The images that resulted from my samples were extremely complex. The fluidity of the color changes really 'drew' me (I'm sorry) to creating a composition from one of the photographs. 

almost looks like clouds...

this one is in a distinctly liquid matrix.. but could appear as a solid

this was the photo I chose to draw

I chose the image above because it reminded me of porcelain china. The color structure would obviously be reversed (white on blue) but I loved the softness of the background paired with the solid shapes in the foreground. There are very subtle color changes and unidentifiable objects floating throughout the image.

During a class critique one of my classmates told me it also resembled flowers or wallpaper. I took a more expressionist approach to this drawn image and focused on the repeated lines and shapes. Guess that is also what pattern designers do... but it gave me excellent results. And to the casual observer it really could be anything. Many people commented on this image being their favorite in the series at that point - when I explained to them what it was I got some pretty funny faces. It was all part of the plan, people! I like to see your reactions to my work.

The next installment of images will be featured in the next post! I am so sorry it took so long. So forever-long to get to this point, but life has a funny way of interfering with my internet and blogging time. And I'm not too upset ;)

Ms. Kanak