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Pearl: A Junior Conceptual Project by Ann Suzuki (2015)

I am exploring the feeling of jealously through the experience of seeing children play. For my conceptual art, I used a mixture of acrylic paint, Photoshop, and Illustrator. To start off my project, I first drew an oyster on a canvas and used acrylic paint to illustrate it. Then I photographed my drawing and put it in Photoshop to edit. I used the lasso tool to cut out the oyster and put it into Illustrator to add further effects. For the background, I simply put black but to create a more mysterious and dark atmosphere, I used photoshop to make fog. I changed the opacity of each brush stroke to add perspective and depth. I also wanted to add a human figure inside the pearl, so in Illustrator I used the pen tool to draw the person. In illustrator, I also drew out a pearl and added different effects to give it a more realistic appearance. To add further effect, I used the pen tool to draw web patterns and added it to the oyster. I also used the Photoshop Shape Tool to create white dusts for the background.

Since my feeling was jealously, I wanted to use dark colors to portray that emotion. In one of my poems, I mentioned that childhood is a treasure that we abuse. When I think of an oyster with a pearl in it, I think of something that is expensive and priceless. However, like most treasures, if we abused it, it can change us for the worst. I used this as a metaphor for life and childhood. When we were younger, everything was much more innocent and pure but as we age, we start to see the bad things in life. We slowly get corrupted and I wanted to express my feeling of jealousy of how I can't go back to my pure childhood state. I also added two humans in the pearl to show the transition of pure to corruption. Overall, I wanted to play innocence versus demoralization.
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