“Use one of your favorite poems as inspiration for a poster. Edit an image or create your own background using any photo editing software, add the poem, and make sure the background exemplifies the poems message. Get creative and have fun!”
https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/poetry-art/
Alright, please bear in mind my history. Today was the first day that I edited a photo in a software besides google doc image options.
First things first, (i’m the realest), I choose a poem. This was pretty easy. I am the kind of person to have a favorite poem, but a favorite poem that is not by an easily recognizable poet. Missed You. is actually by a student who went to UMW. I saw this poem in the aubade when I toured here and never forgot it. So we got the poem.
Now, we need some kind of poster idea. When I read this poem the thing that sticks out is the candle and the fact that they are in darkness. I originally wanted to play around with the darkness and found/edited this background.
Then I wanted to add the candle image.
So I found this photo of dripping candles.
This is where the photo editing software came in. I used Photopea, which is free by the way, and it was honestly a little overwhelming at first, but I just played around. I tried to make both the dark weave background and the candles work together, but it just wasn’t really working, so I scraped the dark background and went with just the candles.
I cut out around them so that it looked like this. Yes, I kept the little dots around them, that was on purpose because I thought that it looked cool.
I then formatted the words a little so that they fit around the parts of the photo I left.
Now I had this. I thought I was done, but as I put this photo at the top of the blog, I realized that the bottom part was really empty. So I went back and did some simple Google Doc image re-arranging and got this.
As I was writing this, I thought about changing the background color. I present this alternate version with a black background.
I like this version better so I am officially changing it. This is the final version.
Do I love the finished product? Not exactly. Am I proud of it? Yes. Definitely. I did something new and accomplished a not-half-bad end goal. From here, there is nowhere to go but up. And I can take solace in that fact.
2 replies on “A Dark Valentine”
I like the eraser marks. They remind me of the tunnels that carpenter ants leave behind, and they have a similarity to the dripping wax. The dark background helps the image area glow, whereas the white overpowered it. THere’s a good sense of balance and symmetry too.
This was SO COOL and so unique. Just glancing at it at first, I never would’ve guessed that was wax from a candle. I liked the dots around it too, because it added more to the photo. Really good job!