13/1 Final Project: RBG Justice League

My three dice were painting, photography, and justice. The first thought when I saw the word justice was RBG. I had to create a project around the judge who fights for women and equality every day. The other idea that came to mind with the word justice was superhero. I decided to combine the two. I began this project by picking 5 women in law and or politics who fight for women's rights, equality, and against discrimination towards women. I of course chose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and then decided on Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Gloria Allred, Michelle Obama, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

My second step was to begin drawing each of these women's costumes and positions on the page. I put RBG at the center, of course, with her her notorious RBG crown, and positioned all the other women around her. While I designed each outfit myself, I needed some help in drawing the bodies and their hero stances. I looked on google for examples of female superheroes in business outfits and found many examples of cartoon images with the stances I needed. I used the key words business outfits because when I simply look up "female superheroes", I got over-sexualized women in scanty costumes. This is not the image I wanted to portray. After choosing each woman's stance/action pose, I looked up pictures of them to get a feel for their body types. 

My third step was to outline each body using a calligraphic pen to help my characters stand out from their background and give them concrete form. When I finished outlining I slowly began to add color using gouache paints. I started with the red capes, then moved on to outfits. I chose black for the two justices, and blue for the other three women as all of them are democrats. I briefly considered giving each woman a color of her own based on outfits each one wears in public, but I felt that choosing one color for all of them would unify the image. 

My last step in painting the women's costumes was to add emblems to their chests. I based the design off of superman's emblem, and used each woman's initials for lettering. 

To finish the painting aspect, I needed to choose a background. My initial thought was to put them in some sort of court room setting or in front of a Washington DC building, but neither felt quite right. I instead put them in the sky, with clouds around them and under their feet. I used pink on the clouds as a symbol of femininity. A sky background felt more appropriate than an official court setting because of the superhero costumes. Superheroes who fly and have capes usually take to the skies. 

My last and final step for the painting was to add the women's heads. To incorporate photography, I found portrait images that fit the stances I painted for each woman. I wanted either serious or smiling faces. I used the magnet tool in photoshop to select the head on each body, and right clicked to create layer copies of the heads removed from the bodies. I then used the transform tool to select the right scale for each head. I measured the head spaces I created on the painting, and used that information to adjust the sizes of the heads in photoshop. I printed them out to see if I had chosen the correct sizes, and found that each one was slightly too large. I scaled down the sizes a bit and reprinted. I then cut out each head, positioned them on the painted bodies, and glued them down. I had to fill in some blue sky background gaps as the head shapes were different from the ones I had drawn.