Image Making Ecology

Image Making Ecology Assignment 

This assignment was created for my Visualization and Visual Culture in Communication class, which I completed in my Spring 2011 semester at SFU. The class investigated theories and techniques of visualization design and visual communication. Instructors David Murphy and Jan Marontate awarded me a B+ for the class. 

The purpose of the Image Making Ecology Assignment was to use Photoshop to manipulate or create original images that represent a particular artist, style, genre, technique, or technology as a way of exploring the different tools that Photoshop offers and gain a quick lesson in art history. 

Emily Carr: Watercolour

Emily Carr, (1871-1945) was a Canadian artist who painted in watercolour exclusively in her early years. Her most common subjects were still life and landscape, particularly images from her home in Victoria, B.C., which she rendered as accurately as possible in a light, muted palette. 

The technique of water-based painting dates to ancient times. In the West, European artists used watercolor to decorate illuminated manuscripts and to color maps in the Middle Ages, and to make studies from nature and portrait miniatures during the Renaissance. When paper began to be mass produced in the West, watercolour gained popularity and precedence as an art medium. From the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium.

The advantages of watercolor lie in the ease and quickness of its application, in the transparent effects achievable, in the brilliance of its colors, and in its relative cheapness. (New World Encyclopedia, 2008)

Watercolor painting stimulated many innovations, including heavier papers and brushes (called "pencils") manufactured expressly for watercolor painting. Watercolour painting also lead to the innovation of step-by-step painting or “colour by number”. 

The lack of permanence of pigments in watercolor caused a sharp decline in their status and market value, while the rise of abstract expressionism in the 1940s and 50s lead to a decline in the popularity of the medium. 

In order to make this image I used an original photograph, taken off the shores of Savary Island, B.C. and applied different filters and blend modes to multiple layers. 

In Photoshop:

1. Create 3 copies of background layer, so you have 4 layers in total
2. Turn off top 2 layers and select layer 1 and apply Filter>Artistic>Cutout: Number of Levels 4, Edge Simplicity 4, and Edge Fidelity 2
3. Change blend mode of layer 1 to “Luminosity”
4. Turn on and select next layer above layer 1 and apply Filter>Artistic>Drybrush: Brush Size 10, Brush Detail 10, and Texture 3
5. Change layer blend mode to Screen
6. Select next layer above layer 1 copy and apply Filter>Noise>Median and set Radius to 12 pixels
7. Change layer blend mode to  Soft Light

Sepia & Photography 

Photography is a method of recording images by the action of light on a sensitive material, invented in the 1800s. In 1984, Canon invented the first digital electronic still camera.

A sepia photograph is a black and white image that has a warm brown tint. Sepia tints can make a photograph look classic and old-fashioned, and they are popular in contemporary photography. The pigment was originally made from sepia cuttlefish as a treatment to make photographs more durable, and the brown tint was a byproduct of the treatment. Adding a sepia tone to a black and white photograph softens the image, giving it a warm, dreamy feeling. 

Matilda Aslizadeh’s Phantom Smile presents a suite of six fictional female faces, each in a “misty fog of celebrity and allure. Each headshot features a groomed, bejewelled woman flashing the kind of impersonal, practised and static smile that is typically reserved for red-carpet flashbulb moments.” Aslizadeh has further removed her subjects from our reality by applying a thick sepia haze to their images, “a soft-focus effect that suggests how the omnipresent Hollywood machine obscures our perceptions and dulls our senses.”

In order to create this effect I used an original photograph taken of me on my graduation in 2005 and used Photoshop to create a sepia tone effect and experimented with blurs, style, and film grain. 

In Photoshop:

1. Change to sepia tone
2. Filter>Motion blur: angle 5 distance 19
3. Filter>Gaussian blur: radius 2.6
4. Styles: sun faded style (to make more yellow)
5. Filter>Artistic>Film grain: 1, 0, 0 

Pointillism 

Pointillism was the signature style of Neo-Impressionism, which was a French art movement that started in 1886 (succeeding Impressionism), characterized by painting that emphasized an importance in optics. Instead of painting in strokes, artists comprised images of distinct dots, believing this application of pigment would produce better colour vibrancy. Art critics in the late 1800’s coined the term “Pointillism” in an effort to ridicule the style, however, it is no longer meant to be insulting. Pointillism and its focus on colour stimulated the emergence of Fauvism and German Expressionism. 

In order to create this effect I used an original photograph taken of a January sunset in North Vancouver, looking south, and applied a filter and experimented with cell size and fade levels. 

In Photoshop:

1. Duplicate layer
2. Filter>Pixilate>Pointallize, Cell Size: 50
3. Edit>Fade Pointillism 

Pop art:

Pop Art was a visual art movement that emerged in the 1950s in Britain and the United States. It is characterized by clear lines, sharp paintwork and clear representations of symbols, objects and people commonly found in popular culture. Pop art made a commentary on contemporary society and culture, particularity consumerism, and the images are presented with humor, criticism and irony. The two most notable Pop Artists were Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

Pop art is widely interpreted as either a reversal or reaction to Abstract Expressionism or as an expansion upon it. In an attempt to bring art back into American daily life, it rejected abstract painting because of its sophisticated and elite nature. It is considered to be one of the last modern art movements, on the cusp of postmodern art, breaking the divide between commercial arts and fine arts, as well as high art and low art. 

Pop Art coincided with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s, frequently appearing in advertisements for musical bands and on record covers. Afterwards Pop Art came in a number of waves, all pertaining to the urban, consumer, modern experience. 

In order to create this effect I used an original photograph taken of me on my 21^st Birthday and experimented with many different elements of Photoshop, as instructed by Darren Rowse in an online tutorial (Rowse, 2010). Specifically, I learned techniques such as how to adjust threshold levels and how to use different blending modes, colour layers and text. 

In Photoshop:

1. Open image and duplicate background layer
2. Image>Adjustments>Invert
3. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, set to 7
4. Change blending mode to Colour Dodge
5. Adjust threshold 
6. Create new layer and set blending mode to Multiply
7. Choose skin colour and fill with paint bucket and rename layer “skin”
8. Duplicate background layer and move to top of layer hierarchy 
9. Choose colour for hair, go to Filter>Sketch>Halftone Pattern, Size 2, Contrast 50
10. Change blending mode of this layer to Overlay and rename layer “hair”
11. Create new layer and name it “lips”
12. Select red or pink colour and change blending mode to multiply 
13. Hide all layers except background layer, zoom in and colour in lips with brush tool
14. Unhide layers and create new layer called “eye whites”
15. Change blending mode to overlay and colour in whites of the eyes and teeth
16. If any brown on eyes select hair layer and erase 
17. Create new layer called “eye colour” and select the blue colour 
18. Change blending mode to multiply and colour in iris with paint brush
19. Create new layer called “background” and change blending mode to multiply and colour in background colour 
20. Find speech bubble online and open it in PS
21. Select and copy into your pop art image 
22. Create text box and write words 
23. Select skin layer and colour in eyebrows black with paintbrush 
24. Select hair layer and erase any brown that bothers you 

Anime

Anime is a Japanese technique, beginning in the start of the 20^th century, as a result of Japanese filmmakers experimenting with Western animation techniques, such as Walt Disney. In the 80’s it experienced a boom in production, while in the 90’s and 2000s, anime series became worldwide successes. In 2008, the Japanese government created the position of Anime Ambassador to promote anime worldwide in diplomacy.

Both hand-drawn and computer-animated anime exist and are used in television series, films, video, video games, commercials, and internet-based releases. Styles can vary, but the general liner qualities are influenced by Japanese calligraphy and Japanese painting. The most common form of anime drawings includes "exaggerated physical features such as large eyes, big hair and elongated limbs... and dramatically shaped speech bubbles, speed lines and onomatopoeic, exclamatory typography.” (Webb, 2006).  

In order to make this image I used a template that I received online and experimented with colour, shape, and opacity levels in Photoshop. 

In Photoshop:

1. Open black and white image template and create 4 copies of the background layer: skin, eyes, backpack, mouth
2. Select skin layer and fill with paint bucket (use a mid-tone in order to see tones and highlights later on). 
3. Select backpack layer and fill backpack with paint bucket, using a darker colour on all the forward facing bits, a light colour on all the bits facing up, and a medium colour of all the bits facing towards the left. 
4. Select mouth layer and colour tongue pink and mouth black 
5. Select eye layer and use paint brush to colour in eyes, using a dark yellow a medium yellow, an even darker yellow, and a colour very close to black but within the yellow hue range. 
6. Create 3 new layers and name them tone-skin,, tone-backpack, and tone-mouth  
7. Select tone-skin and skin layers by holding ctrl. 
8. Draw black line using brush tool pixle size 3 through body in rounded shape and on legs 
9. Erase line through arms and draw new, rounded lines in arms and triangle shapes above eyebrows and below mouth
10. Fill in lines with black
11. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set low radius (1)
12. Select tone-mouth and mouth layers by holding ctrl.
13. Draw line for tongue and fill in with black and apply Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set low radius (1)
14. Select all tones and adjust opacity to approx. 30%
15. Create 2 more layers: highlight –skin, highlight-eyes 
16. Select highlight-skin and skin and draw white lines and fill in at top of head 
17. Create circle shapes on hands, legs, tongue, and mouth and add Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur radius .5 
18. Change opacity of layer to 30%
19. Select highlight-eyes and make it above all other layers 
20. Draw white circles in eyes 
21. Layers>Styles>Outer Glow, select a blue colour and set opacity to 100% 
22. Create new background layer and add gradient, using 2 colours for background and foreground in the colour swatch selector and adjust opacity to 78% 

Silk Screen Printing

Silkscreen printing, or serigraphy, is an early method of printing that consists of passing ink through a stenciled fabric mesh or screen that's stretched across a rigid frame to form a design.

During the First World War in America screen printing took off as an industrial printing process, often used for making flags and advertisements. The invention of the photographic stencil revolutionized the process. Artists such as Andy Warhol used silk screen printing for his Pop-Art commentaries on popular culture. The method is still used today. 

To replicate the technique of silk screen printing I desaturated my image and adjusted the threshold levels. I then used the paint bucket to fill in different colours and mimic Andy Warhol’s silk screen artwork. 

Works Referenced

Shadbolt, D. Emily Carr. (2011). In The Canadian Encyclopedia online. Retrieved 

from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0001428

(January 31, 2011). Emily Carr. Retrieved from 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Carr

(February 9, 2011). Watercolour Painting. Retrieved from 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercolor_painting

Esaak, S. (2011). Art History: Watercolour. Retrieved from 

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/glossaries/g/w_watercolor.htm

Skinner, S. (2009). Watercolour History. Retrieved from 

http://www.bigcityart.com/watercolors/watercolorpages/sup/history.html

Chiedozie, A. The History of Pointillism. Retrieved from 

http://www.ehow.com/about_5480718_history-pointillism.html

2006. 19^th Century Pointillism. Retrieved from 

http://www.fineartsurrey.com/artTypeDetail.php?aid=39

(January 31, 2011). Pointillism. Retrieved from 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism

Moffat, C. (November, 2007). Pop Art: The Art History Archive – Movements. Art 

Based on Popular Culture. Retrieved from http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/popart/

(February 10, 2011). Pop Art. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art

(September 22, 2009). Art History: Pop Art: (1958 – 1975). Retrieved from 

http://wwar.com/masters/movements/pop_art.html

(February 9, 2011). History of Photography. Retrieved from 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography

Ehlert, S. (June 2, 2010). The History of Sepia Photography. Retrieved from 

http://www.ehow.com/about_6581808_history-sepia-photography.html

(February 7, 2011). History of Anime. Retrieved from 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anime.

(March 21, 2008). Doraemon sworn in as anime ambassador. Daily Yomiuri. 

Dave Kehr. (January 20, 2002). Anime, Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age, 

The New York Times. 

Webb, M. (May 28, 2006). "Manga by any other name is...". The Japan Times. 

Retrieved from http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060528x1.html. 

(2006). Brief History on Silk Screen Printing. Retrieved from 

http://www.customtshirts-now.com/silkscreenprinting.html

Taylor, S. The History of Silk Screening. Retrieved from 

http://www.ehow.com/facts_4966058_history-silk-screening.html