Time - Project 7

I think that once again I didn't really understand this assignment. I thought we were suppose to pick a phrase, divide it into 4 or 5 sections, make a piece of each one and then put them all together for one final piece. That doesn't really make any sense, but that's what I did.

I picked two phrases: "Age is just a number!" and "Time is an illusion." I did a few versions of each and decided they were both suited to a starry night, space background. I recently received an antique watch and was inspired to put that in somehow.

This is really two pieces stitched together. First I made the starry night sky on the left half in Photoshop. I started with a blue layer and added depth using the leaf brush in the dodge and burn modes. Then I added the stars with a brush and pencil in several layers and blurred all of that. I duplicated my sky, moved it to cover the right side of the canvas and then flipped it over so it wouldn't look like a mirror image of itself.

Then I added my text. I used a font called Viner Hand. I wanted it to look hand written across the sky. For the linear element, I used the line of text. I did each phrase separately. On the right side I used a mask layer on the text and applied a gradient to make it look like illusion was fading away.

Next I added in the pictures of the timepiece. And I put a flare on the face of the watch just to add a little cosmic detail. I had originally done this as two separate pieces but in order to get it balanced, I had to redo it as one piece, moving the text and watches around for better balance.

Before I decided on this composition, I tried several other versions with the same phrases. One of the "age" pieces that I did and liked is the phrase, "Age is just a number." repeated over and over - like someone saying it over and over trying to convince themselves it's true. I superimposed the text over a calendar. I used browns and reds for the text, the same colors in the vintage calendar. I liked this one but couldn't figure out a similar image for the "time" phrase I was using.


I did a "Time is an illusion" with a starry sky. I liked this one. But I thought the text I choose - abduction - was hard to read. Abduction doesn't have lower case which bothers me. I oriented the text to the right and used a vertical line as my linear element. Afterward I decided to delete all the stars to the right of the line. So I guess that line is the end of time. I liked the starry sky background, so I decided to use that background but different type for my final image.

I fiddled around with several other ideas. Most of them I trashed before they were finished. Well, here's one that I didn't finish but didn't delete. I decided I didn't like it as a simple clock. I wanted to do real ornate, scroll work hands and that was harder and more time consuming than I thought it would be. This was just a rough draft. I didn't line up all the dots for the numbers on the clock. And it was a challenge to get the text lined up and sized right. This one was just more time and trouble than it was worth.