I’m gonna break down some of my art down. These 2 pieces were created in 2015, 2 of my favorite photo manipulations because they have an deeper meaning. Also I’ll talk about some technical things involving the art.
 
The first piece is shows a young child watching a rap video on TV, smoking weed, surrounded by a cup of lean (codeine), a gun, bullets, coke, and stacks of cash. Hes wearing an earring and have his cap flipped backwards. I purposely used the stereotypes to try to make the point more obvious to the viewer. These are things you find in most hardcore rap videos and mixtape covers (I started off as a mixtape cover designer BTW)
 
Notice in the smoke clouds you’ll see money, booty, police brutality and prison. The concept makes a connection between the prison industrial complex and popular hip hop. The toxic message in the music brainwashes  the listener into thinking that self destructive behavior is acceptable and will set them up to fall victim to the traps of the system. HipHop is entertainment but also can brainwash naive youth into thinking that the being lifestyle promoted is reality, not knowing that these things will lead to them being subjugated by a system that was put in place to operate off their down fall.
 
The second cover shows something similar only this time I used the silhouette of Satan and the angel baby for metaphorical purposes rather than religious. The baby angel is the lost innocence of their youth, and Satan shadow represents just shows that a dark force is lurking during this activity.
 
As far as the technical aspect goes I sample various images and chopped them up to create the story. Here’s the samples for the first piece: *see article*
 
I used Photoshop of course for both pieces. The first one, I used alot of colors to give it a night club like strobe effect and the second image I keep more realistic. It has the blue TV in the dark look. Both of these pieces are more realistic than most of my art. I normally like to use multiple colors, patterns, and textures, but this time I wanted the message to stand
out more than the aesthetics.In the future I’ll try to break down some stuff . I normally don’t like to explain my work because I feel like it takes away from the viewer interpretation but sometimes I will  do it anyway (shrug).
 
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Read the full article here:
 
https://johnspainat.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/breaking-my-art-down-vol-1