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Title: Transcendence of Doubt
Media: Pen, paper, oil pastel, Photoshop
Creative Process
Because I have studied and worked so much in video production
for the past eight years, a lot of that shows up in my process for
working on still image projects.
For this piece, I started with the theme “The virtues of doubt.”
From there, I sketched out a very rough outline/storyboard to
determine the elements that would be included in each frame,
their relative placement within that frame, and the text that
would accompany them. I also made notes on lighting, color
temperature, and photo elements that would be used in each
frame. Then I drew each figure on paper, coloring two with oil
pastel to give them some extra texture and definition, as well
as a conceptual link between the first and last figure. I scoured
my photo library for the source images that I had determined I’d
need in each frame for transforming/compositing purposes.
I scanned each of my hand-drawn images, cleaned them
up in Photoshop, colored them, and started assembling the
four frames, one by one. I composited the photos together for
backgrounds, using layers of concrete, outer space, and clouds
to build hypersaturated, vibrant canvases for my figures to lie on.
Finally I scaled and positioned each of my figures and
dropped in the text.
J
ustin Kavoussi, at twenty-five, is a new media artist
with experience working in TV/film editing, video
production, motion graphics, Web design, and
graphic and comic art.
The primary purpose of artistic expression, as Kavoussi
sees it, is an attempt at a kind of societal therapy—a
melding of art, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology
that can enlighten, heal emotional traumas, and accom-
plish much of what pure psychedelic consciousness is
said to have the potential to achieve.
Much of Kavoussi’s work has been influenced by his
obsession with technological singularity—the point where
technology evolves at an ostensibly infinite rate, man and
machine merge completely, and our species becomes
abstract concentrations of information and energy, rather
than our limited visceral selves.
Kavoussi currently resides in New York City, where he’s
producing a psychedelic-sketch webcomic series.
Justin Kavoussi
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Justin Kavoussi
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Justin Kavoussi
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