These graphics were made to accompany this interview with the rapper/producer Joshua Castillo aka Cast.
While preparing to interview Cast, my focus creating the article visuals were centered around the idea of “duality.” I wanted to visually represent an emerging artist whose work and creative process held a complex degree of depth. There are stark differences that I wanted to capture between who he is on and off stage, between his hypnotic bravado and his an introspective calm.
Being that we are both Frank Ocean fans, the cover art for Ocean’s solo track “Chanel” felt apropos as a visual anchor. My initial sketches also drew from the experimental imagery in other music publications like Raygun Magazine. After our interview, I photographed Cast with some of Lomography’s Color Negative 400 35mm film along with a few RAW shots too. I asked Cast to emote the two extremes we discussed in the article.
At the time, due to the low light, my images came with a welcomed degree of grain and noise. I used Snapseed to edit some of the RAW photos to match the 35mm ones. This way I had more control over where I wanted the visual dissonance. Obviously, film and digital shots will never be the same,but I hoped that their minute differences would assist the final composition.
The plan was then to juxtapose images that contrasted emotionally and procedurally i.e. analogue versus digital techniques. I used Clip Studio Paint and Affinity Designer to layer the images and create collages.
I hoped that experimentation and physical techniques would cause my work to feel genuine. One of my favorite pieces embodied this intention. I printed an image on a polaroid using the Polaroid Lab. Then I had my own eureka moment when I was able to properly derive “Cast” from “Joshua Castillo” with scotch tape.
This project compelled me to learn more about digital and analogue processing techniques. In the future, I want to develop my skills so that I can be both intentional with my images while also leaving room for play.
Thank you for reading.
