Kelina Tse

My overall theme for my artworks is urban legends. The stories I picked were ones with a slightly disturbing history behind them, as I thought it would be interesting to create a piece based on certain characteristics of an urban legend. I wanted to portray the original creepiness or eerie feeling that the urban legends initially gave off. I chose to stick mainly with one medium– digital art, as I found it the best when using dark colors or trying to create a certain vibe. Additionally, it was easy to make any changes and edits I wanted, such as changing the focal point, the canvas size, or different colors. There are many different layers, which makes it easy to test various techniques and colors. One of the main techniques I took advantage of are the tools called “layer effects”. These layer effects help deepen shadows and add glows of color. It also can add in hues of colors without completely changing the whole piece’s color scheme. This is perfect for the artworks I created, as it helps bring out the eerie atmosphere of a piece even more. These kinds of techniques are hard to do with any other medium, which is why most of the artworks I chose to showcase were made digitally through Clip Studio Paint. In addition to these techniques, I also had many inspirational artists that helped me reach my theme. My artworks were inspired mainly by the artist’s usage of colors and their techniques of applying these colors. I was also inspired by how some did their backgrounds. For example, Diao Si Gui was inspired by WOOMA, who created music videos with very expressive characters. I was inspired by several of their music videos and wanted to create a piece with a character who was also very expressive. I chose a dark background for my exhibition because of how dark all my pieces are, with pops of colors to draw the eye. When arranging the artworks, I put the warm colors on one side and the cool colors on the other. Since there are fewer warm-colored artworks, I put those ones on top. There are three warm-colored artworks– two with a simpler background and one with more details. The two simple ones also happened to have a dark circular framing, so I put those on the edge for symmetry. In the middle is the more detailed artwork. On the bottom layer, there are five artworks with an overall cool color scheme. Two of them were originally traditional (one was a watercolor and digital and the other was color pencils and pen), so I put them on the edge, to also keep the symmetry. I decided to put Siren in the center, as it is really bright compared to the others. Siren has a lot more contrast in the piece, where values are a lot more extreme. Due to how eye-catching this piece is, I put it in the middle so it would be the emphasis of the whole gallery. The last two have pretty dark backgrounds, which satisfies the symmetry. I put the Island of the Dolls on the right side because the background is more detailed compared to Diao Si Gui. In summary, the top row contains the warm color pieces and the bottom row contains the cool color pieces. The left side contains more simple drawings with simple backgrounds, while the right side has more complex backgrounds. However, even with the left and right sides being sorted by complexity, there is still symmetry going on in the middle when you compare the pieces together. By setting up my gallery like so, it creates a nice unity and balance between all the artworks I have created. As for the background color, I chose a solid dark grey color in order to match the dark colors on the pieces. Not so dark that it blends with the artworks, but not too bright that it pops out too much. I placed these artworks like so for viewing pleasure, since all of these artworks are different in terms of cultural roots, but also similar in terms of the subject matter.