Created for a Digital Arts course, I sought to combine my love of computers and flowers as a hyper-realistic, surrealist collage. Inspired by the works of Rene Magritte, I planned to use a flower to obscure or replace the subject’s face. As a modern twist, I also wanted to interpret feelings as both a flower and a computer virus, which causes a warning message to pop-up saying that software has been installed.

Much of my original intent and plan translated well into my final product, despite a few challenges and modifications. In this piece, I wanted to capture the chaotic feeling of embarrassment when one realizes they’ve caught feelings for someone, interpreting admiration as both a flower and a virus, something beautiful yet disruptive. To simultaneously consider how it feels internally, with how it looks on the outside. Blue symbolizes imagination, intuition, and sensitivity, which is fitting since I inverted the colour of the flower to contrast with the warm-toned hands. Following the computer theme, the background features a glitching display screen; the vertical lines in various colours create a visual rhythm. Created using the brush tool, the glowing outline represents a positive aura and also allows the subject (focal point) to pop out from the image, emphasizing the subject. To achieve balance, I intentionally resized, spaced, and positioned the notification and the subject. I also utilized the: eraser tools to refine edges, selection tools (rectangle, lasso, object select, mask, polygon), filters, other image adjustments, and layering. To create a real pop-up message, I coded a short script in AppleScript, ran it, then took a screenshot. Having taken a photo of a textbook diagram, I used the clone stamp tool to try to remove the black pointer lines on the heart, but decided to leave most of them in because it looked like it indicated which parts were affected. It was challenging to adapt my ideas to fit what was achievable with my current skills during the 4 days I worked on it.