Francis - Dating Final

For this project, I did not know what I wanted to do at first because I kind of close myself off when it comes to relationships. Every time I visit my family or a friend that I have not seen in a long time, they ask me about my love life, and I always respond ‘nonexistent.” Once they get that answer from, which they do not quite understand or want to believe, they then ask me who I have a crush on or what I am looking for in a person (both in terms of personality and features). After they get another undesirable response from me in which I tell them that I do not have a crush on anyone or a specific type, they ask what is wrong with me, and I answer them with “nothing. I just like being single and independent. I am not looking for a relationship, especially right now, because I want to live my college years to its fullest and not be tied down to anyone.” They finally shake their head up and down in agreement to what I just said. However, I can still tell that they are unsatisfied that they know nothing about my love life, even though I had told them everything about my love life. Since I am different when it comes to the topic of dating and relationship, I really wanted to focus on that for my project.

As a result, I played off the idea of “sidenote: people who want to date me, beware of my independence complex” for my design. Initially, I wanted to make it like a page in a textbook where they have all of those sidenotes, but then I thought about different ways to portray it without doing the obvious. Then all of a sudden, I decided to make “independence complex” into a tattoo on my left arm. The reason behind that was because a tattoo becomes a part of the person. In addition, usually when you first meet someone you shake hands with the person, so I wanted to make this as a warning sign for people to see when shaking hands (“oh he has an independence complex, I better stay away from him”). The reason why I put the tattoo on the left arm, as opposed the right, is because the veins in the left arm are the main veins that go right to the heart. In order to make the text have tattoo feel on the picture of my arm, I played with the blending mode along with brightness/contrast, curves, levels, and the burn/dodge tools.

Next, I wanted to add a list of reasons why I like being single, so I put the text behind my arm with an opacity of 56 percent to make it deconstructive. In addition, I overlapped “sidenote: people who want to date me, beware of my” (which I made red so that it could stand out more) over the list to make it more deconstructive. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed making this piece and taking a different approach to the project.