Self Portrait

I decided to use a collage technique for my self-portrait for many reasons. One being I love collage work, when done right, so why not use it for my piece!
The basic idea is “I’m at home in my world” or “It’s my happening and it’s freakin’ me out!” (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970). So, my head is a hot air balloon floating over a peaceful nature scene. I do have a fascination with hot air balloons and always feel that I don’t have control over my thoughts, so I thought it was apt that I would have a pilot that would guide me across the land o’ thoughts. The images are simple representations of my thoughts. Some are at conflict with others, some relaxed and some in chaos. The black bird would represent my ever-present self-deception. I have a fascination with crows and their various mythologies. They are known for their deceptive nature, among many other things. I also have a fondness of conspiracy theories and subversive revolution. The ‘piece now’ banner in the sky was adapted from the weather underground organization, one of my favorite subversive groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)
The bird headed sword fighters are paying homage to Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The rest is just folly!
I mainly used photo shop to cut out the images from scans and paste them on the background. The background itself was from the web and started to pixelate when I blew it up to big. I changed the opacity ever so slightly and applied a gaussian blur. My head is actually 2 layers of the same image. The back layer is full color and the front layer is a grayscale with the opacity turned down to allow some color through. The boxers up front were cut off at the arm and hip. I placed them in the corner and then used the clone tool to recreate the one boxers arm and leg. Conquering layers was extremely important as I had over 40 at one point. I learned that if you select one layer and then select the “link”
In another you can merge the two using, layers>merge linked. This was extremely helpful especially with the balloon ropes. They were each a single layer until I merged the entire balloon image. The big tool for this project was opacity. It’s extremely helpful when trying to achieve a faded look in the distance (like the plane pulling the banner), or changing color without actually messing with the color, (such as my head). The giant lady reaching for the folks writhing on the ground is an overt use of opacity. I liked this project a lot. I finally feel secure with Photoshop. Scary because I’ve only scratched the surface of it’s capabilities.

This is Amy's face. I was a bad student and forgot to do my self portrait, Amy was kind enough to let me use hers. basically, we were experimenting with multiply and screen in photoshop. I was glad to be introduced to screen. It allows you to lighten areas, whereas multiply allows you to darken areas.

Panel three: The final photo offered challenges as far as what to do with it. I liked the pattern on the bedspread that surrounded her head, but the blanket behind her was a problem. First I cropped the photo down, again thinking of the diagonal rule. I selected the bottom portion of the bedspread up to where her ear is and played around with filters. I believe the path was; filters, artistic, smudge. That gave me the pattern you see on the bottom portion of the bedspread. I then used the clone stamp tool and experimented with short and long selection paths and brush sizes. I ended up using a size 15 brush and make multiple passes to make it very busy. Then of course…I applied the Gaussian blur…which I’m going to have to stop using so much. So that's it. The panic stricken dog goes pee and then feels relief.

Panel two: With this one I tried crop the photo to apply the diagonal rule. Especially because the dog was dead center of the original photo. Then I applied the clone stamp to get rid of the leash. I found if you did little bits at a time it left little or no trace of having applied an effect, though it’s hard to see because of the blur. Which brings us to the last step, again, the Gaussian blur.

Panel one: I started with a picture of the dog that I took standing up. I wanted to see if I took a picture of the door from the floor and then married them if it would have an interesting effect. I then cut out the picture of the dog (using the magnetic lasso) and pasted it into the picture of the door. I was able to be a little more precise by holding down the option or shift key which let you select or deselect without loosing a lot of what you’ve selected. That’s confusing but I don’t know how else to describe it. I then used the paint tool to touch up the dog’s eyes, which had reflections of the flash. Playing around with the liquefy filter I made the edges of the of the door frame wobbly trying to give it a more panicked feel. Finally, my old friend Gaussian blur on the backround.

photoshop doodle

This is a picture of my neighbor Amy. Basically I followed instructions on the assignment. We took a picture on a digital camera and opened it in photoshop. I used the magnetic lasso tool to select the background and then applied a gausian blur. I don't really know the difference between a gausian blur and a regular blur, but the gausian blur seemed to make more sense to me somehow. Or more to the point, achieve the effect i wanted. We were then instructed to use the tools in the toolbar and experiment. I originally gave Amy big eyebrows. She in turn turned me into a drag queen that had gotten beaten up. I used the dodge tool on her lips which seemed to smear the image as if you were running your fingers through paint. (I like that tool.) Then I used the smudge tool on her eyes which made her look like she had cataracts. Both those tools seem to have similar effects with slight differences. Photoshop is fun!