Scanograms

The class discusses scanograms, composition, symbolism, and each student shares an inspirational artist with the class via padlet. Students then bring in their own objects, personal artifacts, to create a composition that represents them. Each student experiments with composition and switching out personal artifacts. Once students have scanned multiple compositions into the computer, they utilize photoshop to make adjustments enhancing the final scan.

I picked these certain artifacts because they represent different aspects of my life. I am a dancer, so I picked a pointe shoe to show this. I play field hockey and it is my favorite sport so I added my goggles to represent me playing that. When I was younger I had a rock collection my grandmother and I would add to. I brought some of the rocks because the rock collection was a fun part of my childhood. Lastly, I have a picture of my friends and I as spirit week because being a blue devil is a key part of me and spirit week is my favorite part of the year.
I experimented with many objects and some of the objects I had to get rid of because you could not see them well. For instance I had a black tap shoe that kept blending in with the background. Sometimes the edges around some of my objects would come out blurry such as my pointe shoe and crystal rocks. To fix the issues I had, I moved around the objects, limited total number of things on there, and pushed down on the objects so that they would come out clearer. Putting flat pictures on the scanner I found worked out really well.
For adjustments, I adjusted the brightness and contrast. I also used the level adjustment which made my made a lot clearer, focused, and better looking. I also added a slight green tint to balance out with all the red in the background.
I am overall pleased with my work. It came out pretty good in the end. The area around my field hockey goggles is still very dark, but you can see the goggles more so now than you could when I originally started. I liked the composition of my piece because it represents me in many different ways. ~Layla A.

I picked the personal artifacts I did, specifically because they are a part of me every single day. I included my rings which I wear all day everyday, I included my locket necklace that holds a picture of me and my aunt who passed away which I also wear everyday. I included my key chain, my phone, and a picture of me and my little sisters. All of these artifacts hold strong significance in my life and are a big piece of me.
I felt that my project was successful overall, with minor obstacles. I had a little bit of difficulty coming up with a strong composition of the items that would have positive space. My biggest obstacle was the background. When I added any background, it made my items appear blurry; no resolution amount could fix it. I had to use the natural light as my background, but it has a good appearance and made my image seem realistic. I had to create about 30 different scanograms with different compositions and different backgrounds, to find one good scanogram which I am extremely happy with.
In photoshop, I played with the brightness, contrast, vibrance, exposure, and many other photoshop elements to create the best image possible. I made parts of my image brighter or darker to create a visual point where my eyes are automatically drawn to. I also changed the picture’s colors to create a brighter and more appealing image to the eye.
I feel very good and I am happy about how well this scanogram came out.I particularly like the different depth levels of the image and how it holds such significance to me and who I am. The only thing I dislike is the background color, but unfortunately a background was not possible because it would’ve created blur. I enjoyed being able to make an abstract piece of work that tells a story about me. ~
Mikenzie P.

For my scanogram I used flowers, feathers, leaves, fairy lights, and my Nonna's scarf. I picked these objects because you can find my room having a lot of plants and lighting. I also used my Nonna’s scarf because she is really important to me and I wanted to use one of the pictures afterwards as a gift to her.
My scanograms came out really well and I had a lot of fun experimenting with backgrounds. I did have a bit of trouble with the fairy lights because when they were on they would turn out blurry. I figured out that it would be better to turn the lights off all together.
I used photoshop in the photo by taking some color out of the objects so the other objects would pop better against the background of Navy blue. I also took out blemishes in the picture like pieces of flower.
In the end I really enjoyed this piece for the fun of sorting out the objects in a way that would contrast against the background, but also have a theme.
~ Regina W.

~Personal Artifacts- I picked each of these items for a particular reason. I decided to use my goggles because they represent me playing field hockey and lacrosse. I used a picture of me and my friend on my phone because she means a lot to me. I decided to use the metal letter M because it is the first letter of my name and my Dad made it for me. I decided to use the two photostrips because the people in it means so much to me and both photostrips represent great times in my life. I decided to use my Vaseline because I constantly bring my Vaseline with me wherever I go and a lot of people associate me with it. Lastly, I decided to make a background out of letters to represent my love of reading.
One of my success’ were with the letter background. I really like how it turned out and how it framed the other items in my piece. I also really liked how the letter M stood out as the central part of the piece. Some of the things I struggled with was the background, letters, and goggles. I wanted to use a blue background, but it kept moving all the letters around and overlapping the letters with the object, so I had to put a black cloth over my blue background to make it heavier and darker. My goggles were hard to scan because of their shape, since they were curved. To compensate, I attached the blue background directly to the goggles with clothespin.
Adjustments- Overall, I mainly adjusted the color of the piece. I did this by adjusting the hue, saturation, vibrance, and brightness. This gave the picture a less shadowy look.I also used the lasso tool to adjust just my phone to give it a more yellow color to match the photostrip. I also adjusted the first photostrip so it was less yellow and matched the color of my phone. Last, I adjusted the color of the photostrip to be darker because the scanner did not pick up on the blackness of the background.
I really like this piece of work and it’s definitely something I will keep looking at after this project is over. I feel like this would be the perfect photo for a phone wallpaper because it represents all the important parts of me. I really like how the letter background and the M came out. I love how crisp and clear the picture is. I dislike how the goggles are curved and shadowy and the coloring of the pictures. I really enjoyed making this piece of work. ~Mariel S.

I used my keys to my car house, air-pods calculator pencil and phone because I feel like I use these on an everyday basis for my life.
I feel like it was easy and fun the only adjustments I had to make was trying to fit all the objects into the scanner.
I cleared everything up and I edited the lighting to make it clearer.
I like how my objects came out and it was really fun. ~ Daniel D.

I picked these items because of their semimetal meaning to me, I am a very sentimental person. The most important things in my life are my family, friends, and sports. These are all things I am passionate about and I liked the idea of bringing them all together through art. One item I chose is my favorite photo of me and my dad. It depicts my dad walking me down the beach at our cottage he's holding my hand, guiding little two year old me through the rocks in the front. The other photos are of me and my best friends. I think it is unfair for people to think that you can only have one best friend, I have 6. We are all close and they are all important to my life. I chose my favorite chapstick because I can’t go anywhere without it in my pocket. My game bow from last year is my favorite cheer bow that I have to represent my favorite sport. I also put my fortune from my fortune cookie that I got in Martha's vineyard that really spoke to me at that time; it reads “welcome change.”
I altered the brightness and exposure to make the background as black as possible and used the sharpen and blur tolls to make the glitter more sparkly looking. I edited the Carmex because it was scratched and a little dirty so I touched up the yellow and red parts of it and made the text more legible.
I wish I could've had more of a color theme, because that is really satisfying to me. I wish I could have incorporated something to represent my mom, but the thing I brought didn’t really show through and I couldn’t tell what it was. I liked that I could bring all of my most important things together into one artwork. ~ Morgan L.

Personal Artifacts: a blue/dark purple crystal, a crystal necklace. A photo, a cd, a cover of the cd & headphones. These artifacts represent me because I love to listen to music, this photo represents me because i love to listen to music, i’ve currently developed a love for crystals. The guy in the photo is my favorite online celebrity, it shows his cd and the picture of when I met him a couple years ago.
Process: What went well was looking at the result of the scanogram after all the artifacts came together. What didn’t go well was trying to find a good background, making sure the artifacts look and match right as well as its color scheme; but after adjusting it accordingly it all came together pretty well.
Adjustments: Photoshopping the image to improve my results helped a lot because the filter I used made it look more darker than what it originally was, the color effect I changed to add more of a blue tone to it; Adjusting the brightness also helped a lot too.
Outcome: I feel pretty good about this piece of work! The parts i like most is how the color of the photo and crystal match well together and adds more of a blue effect to the pic itself also I love the image quality and how clear the photo came out too. What I enjoyed about creating this piece of work is using my own artifacts and creating a really cool image! ~Haley M.

The items that I picked either represent something I use everyday and something I really like, for example the chapstick, car keys and the calculator are things I use on a daily basis. On the other hand, I used a green colored pencil to represent my favorite color which is green, a seashell to represent my love of the beach, my family actually owns a couple houses on the beach/water local and out of state, and then I put the book “Purple Hibiscus” which is my favorite book because of how many different emotions are in it.
Some obstacles I had was the fact that I wanted to fit all 6 of my items on one scan which took a bit of organizing but other then that everything went smooth such as taking the scans etc. I adjusted to my problems by continuing to move things around if they weren’t the way I wanted them in the picture.
Photoshop made my image stand out more and look more colorful but at the same time shadowed well. It also made everything neater looking in my opinion.
I feel like this piece of artwork came out really well and I’m happy I organized things the way I did. The only thing I dislike is the pencil placement because it’s the only space I had but I wish I could have moved it a bit higher and be more slanted so it would look more precise. I enjoyed everything about this artwork because it was something I have never done before. The scanning was more interesting than going on photoshop and editing it because it was cool to use a machine I haven’t handled before. ~ Corey S.