A composition on the reflection of the first assignments to draw a comic digitally and by hand. Collage by Min Kim, October 2019

When thinking about my collage and specifically the message I wanted to convey, I decided to do an aesthetic representation and reflection of myself on the first few assignments of this course: digital and hand-drawn comics.

Beginning with Scott McCloud’s definition of comics, to create the distinction of digital versus conventional, I explicitly juxtaposed images of the digital tools that I use (such as my iPhone and tablet) and a couple drawings from my journal. Influenced by John Lovett’s Design Overview, I centered my hand-drawn pieces and papers in the center to emphasize the origins of my interest in drawing by hand. Since this was also a personal piece, I included objects that identified myself and my personality through the placement of my recognizable glasses and newspapers for my avocation of reading.  In addition, seeing that the early layout of my collage severely lacked color, I contrasted the prevalent black and white tones with vibrant textured green leaves to make my piece both more visually appealing and to negate the monotonous repetition of (lack of) colors. Not only for color and diverse texture, the placement of the leaves in the corners also creates a sense of balance in the collage as well. Furthermore, the crumpled paper not only serves as a textural element but also provides meaning in the struggles making errors in hand-drawn pictures and the lavender adds a soft and feminine flair.

In my experience creating this collage with photoshop, I have learn many new techniques and tools despite having used photoshop before; however, with my previous uses with photoshop, I had only used simple tools for enhancing photographs. The tutorials enabled me to use layer masks in this project and how to use them. In my collage above I used them to add dimension to my work by having some leaves overlap parts of other objects. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed composing in a digital environment because it allowed me to construct and manipulate an aesthetic piece of work using new skills, tools, and mediums.