My first assignment for the 10 stars worth of Visual assignments, I choose to take an average ordinary person, and make them EXTRAORDINARY! I debated for a while on how to make him look extraordinary, because what really makes someone look extraordinary? It is because they look pretty, is it because you put a mask on them,or  is it because you can paint their whole face like a clown? I finally figured out what I wanted to do! And to answer the above questions, the answer is NO! Its not because they look pretty, wear a mask, or dress up like a clown.  I decided to have give him tattoos, piercings (fake for the picture of course) and add a hat.  I did this because 1) I am fascinated by tattoos, I think if the right person does the tattoo it can look amazing and they can be of almost anything, and 2) tattoos and piercing and doing things to your hair (whether it is wearing a hat, dying or cutting your hair) are all ways of expressing one’s self.  I think being yourself is what makes someone extraordinary.   I saw a show one day where a man had his whole body tattooed to make him look like a lizard, he even had implants put under his skin on his face to give the appearance of a lizard, that was his was of representing himself.  For whatever reason, that made him him, and that made him extraordinary. While, I realize some people get tattoos, etc just to get them, I put thought into the ones I have because I wanted them to represent me.  They add a little extraordinariness (know that is spelled wrong, in fact not really sure that’s a word) to me, because they represent me. From doing this, I discovered that I lack artistic ability in my drawing because I am not sure if you can tell what everything is (the thing on his forehead is suppose to be a spider web) and markers can be really hard to get off, it takes a lot of scrubbing. Sorry Hunt!

To do this assignment, I used marker and paint and stick on jewels.  The jewels represent piercings, the paint I used for the vampire teeth and the markers I used to draw everything else with.  I used my iPhone to take the pictures. And then to be able to put them side by side I used a website called Photovisi. (Website: www.photovisi.com)  You can create and download a collage to your computer and do with it as you wish.  In my case, I am uploading it to my blog.  It is free and super easy.  Once you go to the website, you click on the button that says “> click here to start,”  then you choose the collage you want to make, after you click the collage you want to use, it will take you to a page with your collage lay out, there is a huge button that says “add items,” then you click that button and choose the pictures from your computer or photos from your webcam that you want to include in your collage.  You can add as many pictures as the collage you choose calls for.  You can make the pictures bigger or smaller and you can rotate them.  When  you are done arranging, you click the “Finish    ->” and it will save your collage for you.  When it is done saving, you hit the continue button and it will say click here to save your collage, do that.  Then you will be taken to another screen where you again click on the “click here to download your collage.”  It will open as a picture on your computer and you can save it under the whatever name you want.  You can use it to make collage, and I am talking all sorts of collages.

I enjoyed this assignment.  I liked being challenged on how to make someone look extraordinary rather that just painting their whole face, but actually finding meaning behind what I was doing.  It was not just another assignment that I was doing because I had to, it was an assignment I was doing because I wanted to, because I got to be artistic, and because I got to put my own spin on it.