I did a shoot for 9-piece Latin band 'Los Chavos' a couple of weeks ago and have been busy processing them up. One of the parts of the commission (the kinda optional part) was to produce a poster for the band in the style Pop Art Cartoon by taking headshots of the band and reducing them effectively to solid colour paintings. I'd not tried it before but I knew it was possible so I agreed. I'd shot the headshots using the intense blue of our autumnal skies to make it easier to mask out later and replace it with whatever colour I chose.
When I first approached the task I thought 'It'll be easiest just to paint these in Photoshop using the original photo as a base.'. But then I'm not the greatest illustrator in the world and in effect I was afraid they wouldn't look any good (I'm sure I'm not alone on that front) so I went for what I thought was the safest option … trialling and recording a series of actions incorporating various filters in Photoshop. The two main filters were 'Poster Edges' and 'Cutout' which I chose for their ability to effectively reduce the number of colours and tones I wanted in my final image. OK so after a couple of testy tweaky runs I passed all nine of the images through the action … and? Well, the results weren't great, at least for most of the images. One worked really well, two others were alright and the remaining six were rubbish. I re-tweaked the processing and got a slightly better result: three out of the nine were now pretty close to where I wanted them to be … that only left six (the same six as before!) still looking rubbish.
When I arranged all nine into the poster and coloured them up yellow, blue or red … I literally said 'wow!'. I should note that I'm easily impressed with my own cleverness π
looks really good! A friend asked me to do a Warhol-inspired t-shirt design for her – I purchased a Photoshop action online, it works well, but I suppose does not preserve such detail as in a handmade image. this looks excellent, indeed.
Hi Crina … thank you! I looked for an action that did something like this but couldn’t find one that ‘worked’ for the result I was after so I rolled my own but even then it didn’t quite get there … so handmade it became!
They work well! Congrats.
Thanks Elena! π
Impressive, and tenacity usually brings rewards. In your case it indeed did. Technology provides the tools, but you provide the talent.
Awww thank you Sally … that’s a lovely thing to say π
So much talent. And yes, it does indeed look as if you have claimed another avenue for your art.
I can’t wait for the band to print a poster so I can have one. They were originally looking to produce stickers or postcards with the image … either’s fine by me π
I think you've made an amazing job of this, it looks stunning
Thanks! I’m very pleased with the result π
they look great. just my cup of tea π xxx
They go great with a chocolate biscuit π x
Thank you – truly very interesting stuff.
Thanks Marialla π
I'd be totally geeked if I were you! Well done, Geoff.
I’m totally geeked Ginnie π
Wow, I thought they looked good on their own and then I saw them together, fantastic!
Yeah … I think I’ve really found a new avenue of art to explore … thanks Patti π
Ah, I totally forgot to comment this one. I know from my own experience that it is sometimes just easier and faster to do it manually step by step instead of looking ages for a more automated solution. It's a typical 'I know there might be a better way but I don't have the time to search' moment. I like the results you got and together it looks pretty awesome. Well done!
As you know I'm currently very fascinated by steertart and its link to photography so a while ago I tried to create stencils from some of my pictures – the approach is similar to what you tried first and you'd get different colours from different layers. So far so good, the problem is that it doesn't seem to work for all pictures and my Photoshop skills are still pretty basic. Lack of patience good be another problem π
I know … the creative process often takes a circuitous route to get somewhere that was only a step or two away from the origin. Have you any examples of your stencils up somewhere? I’d like to see them π
My stencil experiments didn't really work out that well so there's nothing out or up somewhere yet, except a very simplified Paule stencil in one of my project pics. I was playing around a bit with this yesterday before dinner using one of my selfies as basis and the results were not that bad so I might put something on Flickr for you in the next few days π
I’ll keep an eye out! π
Ok, I've uploaded a few for you on Flickr. I think I'm slowly getting to the look I want which is not so much cartoon-style but should rather be something that you can actually cut and then paint on something. Need to play with this some more π
I know! I was just over at Flickr and saw them pop into my contact’s photos and I thought I recognise that person! π