Artist statement 1

My final artwork was a zine that was all about the lifecycle of a girl, and what is to be considered "girlhood". On the cover you see an ultrasound of a baby that is edited to be pink to symbolize that it is a girl early on. In the next few pages it shows that baby girl growing up with her mom by her side, showing baby pink girl clothes to further infer that the story is all about a girl. In a few of the pages I put collages that are meant to integrate a sense of nostalgia by putting a collage of girl toys, books, online games, etc. And in another page I put a collage of every activity that is included during sleepovers such as face masks, nail painting, hair braiding, and reading teen magazines. Going further into the timeline, the girl becomes a teenager and one thing about teenage girls is that they are eager to change their looks. So I put a girl cutting her hair and then getting a bunch of heartfelt messages from friends about how great her new look is. The same message is ongoing as the girl graduates high school, then goes on to get married and has her group of bridesmaids by her side, and then finally on the back cover, I continue the cycle by putting a gender reveal cake on the back, and surprise! It’s a girl! What I learned while making this zine is how difficult it is to balance both photoshop and illustrator throughout the whole zine. For some pages I found myself focusing too much on the illustrator designs than photoshop. I believe my zine came out great based on my ability to communicate the message because everyone in class during the critique was able to guess what the zine was about. The one thing I would do differently next time, if I had more time, would to go into a bit more detail with he editing and get to play around with more photoshop tools.