Social Media End project
Linocut
As we all know, every social media platform has a logo. Social media itself does not. Therefore we made a logo for social media. The logo represents all the good sides of social media, such as communication between people, meeting new people, world news, making money, entertainment and tips and advice. For every good side, we cut an icon in the linoleum plate, representing a good side. On the left, you can see the linocut we cut into a linoleum plate. On the right, you can see the linocut we pressed on a piece of paper after rolling over it with ink.
Drawing
This drawing was inspired by Andy Warhol. Therefore the drawing is divided into four parts with various colours. Every part means something different and shows a different side of social media. The part in the upper left corner represents the bad side of social media with bad intentions. An example of this is people that invade other people's privacy. We used dark and red colours to highlight this. The part in the upper right corner stands for the sad side of social media and how social media can make people feel insecure. To represent these sad feelings we used multiple blue tints. The lower left corner stands for the happy side of social media. Such as the influencers of social media, making money and other good things about social media. We used bright and happy colours like yellow and green for this part. The lower right corner stands for the innocent side of social media. An example of this is the people that are on social media for entertainment and who do not have any bad intentions. To highlight this side, we used soft and pastel colour for this like pink and light green.
Painting
Social media has a bad side as well as a good side. This painting represents the bad side of social media. Social media addiction is one example of various bad sides. This addiction can have multiple bad effects. It can lower your self-esteem, it can cause depression, it can make you feel like you are missing out and social media (FOMO) and many more. With this painting we wanted people to become more aware of the fact that addiction is terrible and very unhealthy. In the painting, you can see an arm with injections in it. On the injections are names of social media platforms. We wanted it to look here as if social media was being used as a drug. That is because as well as social media, drugs can also be an addiction. The hand is holding a phone which is finding its way into the arm. This way, we wanted to show that when you have a social media addiction, your phone is always with you. Besides that, we have also written words around the arm. The words are some bad effects of social media addiction, as mentioned earlier.
Reflection
Before we started on this project we did a lot of research on social media addition, which you can read on the 'Social Media' page. That is how we decided what to make for this project. During the project, we changed our subject a little, because we started to focus more on the good and bad sides of social media and not only on social media addiction. We have made three different things in total. A linocut, a drawing and a painting. We chose to use different art techniques on purpose because we did not want to do the same thing over again. We made the linocut the wrong way because when you press it on paper, the linocut will be mirrored. We fixed this issue by mirroring the linocut on the computer. Even though we had some trouble pressing it on paper, it was fun to make and we learned from our mistake. While making the drawing, we divided the work and each of us made two parts in total. We did not really have any trouble choosing the different colours we used, because we had brainstormed about this before we started making the drawing. The painting was the hardest to make of all three because it was challenging to paint the little details in the painting. Before we started painting, we decided that Carmel would paint the big parts and I would paint the details with a smaller painting brush. We have had very productive weeks and I think we used our time wisely. We worked together really well and overall I think it was a fun project and we have gained some more art experience.