Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

·         Real name is Andrew Warhola (8/6/28-2/22/87) (Became Warhol after a misprint)

o   Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Parents from Czechoslovakia (does not exist anymore)

o   Father worked in a coal mine

·         In High School, kicked out of art club because he was “too good”

·         Graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Bachelor of Fine Arts)

·         Graduated with degree for pictorial design & wanted to become a commercial illustrator

·         Designed advertisements for women’s shoes

·         Used Polaroid camera

·         Fear of hospitals and doctors, hypochondriac

·         Favorite print making technique was silk screening

·         Friends & family described him as a workaholic

·         His sexuality was speculated upon and how this influenced his relationship to art is “a major subject of scholarship on the artist”

·         First solo expedition in 1952

·         Coined the term “15 minutes of fame”

·         1960s: iconic American products (pop art)

·         Created The Factory, his NYC studio from 1962-1968

·         Celebrity portraits developed into one of the most important aspects of his career

·         Made films (first one called Sleep – 6 hours of a man sleeping) (1963)

·         1965 said he was retiring from painting

o   1972 returned to painting

·         Designed cover for the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers (cover made out of real jean material)

·         Produced Velvet Underground’s first album

·         Started a magazine called Interview, worked for Glamour Magazine, Vogue

·         Shot by Valerie Solanas 3 times for being abusive and “too controlling” (6/3/68)

o   Solanas authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist document

o   "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."

·         Marilyn Monroe = favorite model (not painted until after death)

·         Wore silver wigs until he dyed his hair silver

·         Practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic who described himself as a religious person

·         Died of a heart attack brought on by a gall bladder surgery and water intoxication

·         $100,000,000 for one of his paintings (highest amount paid) (“Eight Elvises”)

·         Referred to as the “Prince of Pop”

4-Square: Shwang

Pop Object: Progresso > Campbell's

Portrait: Swag



Photoshop Reflection

Camille

(Photoshop)

            My main image was the unaltered photo of my friend wearing the red sunglasses. I duplicated the background layer. The first Photoshop technique I did was “copy & paste.” I opened up a second window with a picture of my two friends walking up from Russell. I duplicated the background, and using the magic wand tool and the eraser, I got rid of the background and isolated the image of McKenna and Leslie. I then dragged that image into the main window. The size was already proportional to the rest of the shot, so all I had to do was blur the newly copied and pasted image with the blur tool. Doing so helped it look more a part of the original background.

            The next technique I did was “fisheye.” I flattened the image and duplicated the background layer. Using the elliptical marquee tool, I selected Camille’s face. I clicked on “Select” on the tool bar at the top and hit “Inverse”. I hit delete and was left with the image of Camille’s face. I reversed my selection by hitting “Inverse” again so that instead of the deleted background, Camille’s face was selected. Under “Filter” I went to “Distort” and selected “Spherize”. Making sure that the effect was 100%, I hit OK and was left with this beauteous creature.

            Before the next technique, I flattened the image and duplicated the background layer again. I then did “threshold” on Camille’s red sunglasses. For this technique, I used the magic wand and the eraser to rid the sunglasses of its background in the duplicate layer. (I hid the original background layer so that it would be easier to work with the image.) With the sunglasses against a plain background, I made nine more copies of that layer. On the last layer, I went up to “Image,” “Adjustments,” and selected “Threshold”. I selected 25. I repeated this step for the subsequent nine layers and made the threshold darker by going up by increments of 25 each time. After choosing red as my color, I returned to the top layer and hid all the other layers. Using the magic wand tool and making sure that “Contiguous” was unchecked, I selected the white of the sunglasses and hit delete. I then chose the darkest red, pressed “Ctrl,” clicked on the image icon on the right-hand side, and hit delete. What this did was replaced the black of the sunglasses with the darkest red chosen. I then hid this layer and made the next one visible. I repeated this step for the other nine layers, choosing a lighter red each time. By the time I got to the last layer, the red was nothing more than a marshmallow pink. I flattened the image and duplicated the background layer once again—only this time, the red sunglasses had that “threshold” effect to it.

            The next and final Photoshop technique used was “blending” images. I pulled up a second image of a napkin with the word “love” written on the corner in another window. I made sure that the two images were of the same size. I went to the window of my main image (the already manipulated one of Camille) and went up to “Image” and selected “Apply Image”. I made sure that under “Source”, the second image of the napkin was selected. I then selected “Hard light” as the effect and was left with the final product.

            I flattened the image and saved it. In conclusion, I copied and pasted McKenna and Leslie into the background and blurred them in, I blessed Camille’s face with a 100% fisheye effect, I used threshold on her red sunglasses, and I blended an image of a vandalized napkin onto the manipulated target image. The End J

Extra Credit

Copy & Paste: I pulled an image of a cottage from the Internet and made sure that it was the same size as my main image on Photoshop (landscape). I did the same thing with the two creepy children in the front--only instead of typing in "cottage," I typed in "Hansel and Grettle." I used a variety of tools such as the magnetic lasso, the eraser, and the magic wand to remove the cottage and creepy children from their backgrounds. I then dragged the images into the landscape window and adjusted the sizes a tad so that it would look more realistic. Using the gradient tool, I started from the bottom of the shot and chose "exclusion" to get this supernatural look.

Blended: I opened up two different images in Photoshop. My main image was the shot of Mercy's green room. I duplicated the background layer of my main image. I then went up to "image" and clicked on "apply image." In the source box, I made sure that it was my second image that was selected. Under "blending," I changed the selection to "add" to get this lightened effect of the second image over the main image.

Fisheye: After duplicating the background layer, I used the elliptical marquee tool and selected the bountiful curves of Celine's face (Celine Abellana Castillo, to be exact). I inversed my selection, hit delete to get rid of the background of the second layer, and then inversed my selection yet again. What I was left with was the beauteous floating face of Celine with the little lines of the marquee tool dancing around it. I then went up to "filter", hit "distort", and selected "spherize". After making sure that the effect was 100%, I hit okay and was left with this masterpiece.

Threshold: Duplicating the background layer, I used a tool combination of the magic wand and the eraser to relieve this pigeon of its background. I then made 9 more copies of the lonely pigeon, all while the original background layer was hidden from view. Going up to "image", I hovered over "adjustments" and clicked on "threshold." Starting from the very top layer, I then proceeded to apply this threshold adjustment from lightest to darkest (going up by increments of 25). Afterwards, I went to the top layer again and selected a blue-purple to by my color of choice. Using the magic wand tool--and making sure "contiuguous" was unmarked--I deleted the white from the pigeon. I pressed on the "Ctrl" key and clicked on the image icon in the menu on the right and pressed "Ctrl" again while hitting delete. What this did was change the black to the darkest blue-purple I selected. I continued this process with the subsequent layers. The only difference was that with each succeeding layer, I lightened that blue-purple a tad. I then used an artistic filter for the original background layer to give it a wee bit more texture. And this is what I came out with.

Gradient: I made a duplicate background layer. I first used the threshold technique (described in the above image) on Rochelle before using the gradient tool in the background. On the background layer copy, I went up the "image", hit "adjustments", and clicked on "gradient map". This color scheme of orange and purple was already made available to me--courtesy of Photoshop.