Emili Hibbitts

My work is about being stuck inside the endless loop of starring at screens. As a graphic design student and a graphic designer at my day job, I am constantly in front of a screen. Whether I am creating art or mindlessly scrolling through social media, I have become a digital being. From the moment I wake up in the morning, I am on my phone checking notifications. As I’m waking up, I scroll through social media. On the way to work I open my phone and put on music. While I’m at work, I sit at my desk and work on my computer until it’s time to leave. When I get home, I plop on my pajamas, open my laptop, and start doing homework. Yes, my eyes are strained most days. Yes, I am tired of living through a screen, but this is my reality and I want to share it for those who feel the same way. Being stuck in the lure of notification dings for fear of missing something important. 

 

I create most of my artwork digitally, either on my iPad using Procreate or on my laptop with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I feel I have a larger capability doing digital work because I can manipulate and layer elements easily. For the longest time I didn’t utilize all the effects that were available to me, especially on Procreate. Only recently did I really let myself play around with the program without expecting anything to come of it. The freedom to see what I could create by layering and adding effects allowed me to branch out of my comfort zone. My favorite thing to do on Procreate is to use decorative brushes, make colorful patterns, and then use the liquify effect to move the colors together. After liquifying the pattern, I then go back and add glitch effects, chroma aberration, and change the hue/saturation. Doing this, I never know what I’m going to get when I start, and I don’t have to worry about if I’m doing it right. Using this method is how I created ‘Sucked In’. I started with a general concept of being sucked back into your phone even when trying to get away, but I didn’t know how the piece would turn out at all. After cutting the figure out in Adobe Photoshop and a generic cell phone, I copied each one three times so that I could liquify them together without ruining the integrity of the elements. Then, I followed the steps I outlined before and added glitch, chroma aberration, and changed the hue/saturation until I found something that I was satisfied with. 

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It’s important to be aware of how much time you spend with your eyes glued to a screen. While it’s not all bad, it’s also beneficial to be present in the real world. I’ve started to sit in silence with my coffee in the morning while waking up instead of scrolling on my phone. This is a small change, but it allows me to collect my own thoughts before absorbing someone else’s. I hope that if you gain anything from my artwork that it’s this: it’s okay to spend some time in silence.