Self Portrait

I decided to use a collage technique for my self-portrait for many reasons. One being I love collage work, when done right, so why not use it for my piece!
The basic idea is “I’m at home in my world” or “It’s my happening and it’s freakin’ me out!” (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970). So, my head is a hot air balloon floating over a peaceful nature scene. I do have a fascination with hot air balloons and always feel that I don’t have control over my thoughts, so I thought it was apt that I would have a pilot that would guide me across the land o’ thoughts. The images are simple representations of my thoughts. Some are at conflict with others, some relaxed and some in chaos. The black bird would represent my ever-present self-deception. I have a fascination with crows and their various mythologies. They are known for their deceptive nature, among many other things. I also have a fondness of conspiracy theories and subversive revolution. The ‘piece now’ banner in the sky was adapted from the weather underground organization, one of my favorite subversive groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)
The bird headed sword fighters are paying homage to Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The rest is just folly!
I mainly used photo shop to cut out the images from scans and paste them on the background. The background itself was from the web and started to pixelate when I blew it up to big. I changed the opacity ever so slightly and applied a gaussian blur. My head is actually 2 layers of the same image. The back layer is full color and the front layer is a grayscale with the opacity turned down to allow some color through. The boxers up front were cut off at the arm and hip. I placed them in the corner and then used the clone tool to recreate the one boxers arm and leg. Conquering layers was extremely important as I had over 40 at one point. I learned that if you select one layer and then select the “link”
In another you can merge the two using, layers>merge linked. This was extremely helpful especially with the balloon ropes. They were each a single layer until I merged the entire balloon image. The big tool for this project was opacity. It’s extremely helpful when trying to achieve a faded look in the distance (like the plane pulling the banner), or changing color without actually messing with the color, (such as my head). The giant lady reaching for the folks writhing on the ground is an overt use of opacity. I liked this project a lot. I finally feel secure with Photoshop. Scary because I’ve only scratched the surface of it’s capabilities.