Ten Years of Manipulating
The first thing I did, when I started at university to become an industrial designer, is buy a computer. The second thing I did was obtain a copy of Photoshop, mainly because I was inspired by the art of Dave McKean. Using a scanner and a pile of National Geographic magazines, I was good to go. This is the result after ten years.
In my first year, we had to make lots of collages for various purposes. Often used as a source for inspiration, these collages showed examples of other work, samples of materials or could set a certain mood. Mood boards were especially popular in a class about form exploration and were more abstract in nature. To me, this was the perfect opportunity to start tackling image manipulation, which resulted in the first three images here.
Back then, I thought what I had made was really good, but in hindsight, it probably isn't, especially the third one. The fourth image I dubbed "Four Seasons of Life", showing life as seasons in a clockwise fashion. It worked reasonably well, except for winter maybe. Also, I discovered how to use layer masks here, and how blurring those could be extremely handy. Although the source material still came from National Geographic magazine, the crucifix image is one I'm still happy with today, as it presents more of a whole than any before that.
Made as a mood board for a chess game I had to design, the theme I was going for was to combine both elements of life as well as technology into one design. While a bit artificial, I really like the colors in this one. The seventh piece is the darkest one I have made so far, reflecting my state of mind back then more than relating to anything else.
When good friend Marcel van Driel decided to get married, Edwin den Ouden and I (best men), decided to create something personal. Marcel writes children's books, but his first attempt never saw daylight, so we created a triptych of the main characters from the unfinished manuscript.
Again, one last mood board for school, it's meant to convey the steam punk genre; simple but effective. Lastly, for getting her PhD, I turned Froukje Sleeswijk Visser into a dryad; technically speaking and aesthetically probably as well the best I've done so far, especially compared to the first images here.