A) Milton Glaser:
Milton Glaser, born in 1929, is one of the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. With accomplishments such as the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, many look at him as the embodiment of American graphic design in the latter half of the twentieth century (MGB). He is also known as a modern renaissance man, where his style “brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work (MGB, n.d.).” Susan Scandrett, a San Francisco-based design consultant, said that Glaser has helped pave the way for illustration and design to be intelligent. Intelligent in the way that an illustration’s end result communicates more direct and decisive than a photograph (Perman, 2006). Although Glaser did not start an art movement, his best known works include the iconic I © NY logo and Bob Dylan’s 1966 Poster (Edwards, 2010).
The image I produced was in the style of his Bob Dylan poster, which I assume was made by hand since computers were not very prominent in the 1960’s. Therefore, like Scandrett said earlier, the thing that this hand-made poster would replace is photography.
Since I did not create the shape of the silhouette from scratch, Photoshop has created tools such as layers, magic wand, lasso tool, cut and paste, and inverse selection to help re-create the silhouette effect used in the poster. For the hair, I used the magnetic lasso tool which replaces the pen used in the original poster; however it was difficult to create the shapes I wanted because I could not really control the lines. I tried using the regular lasso tool, but it looked even worse. After each strand of hair was made, I deleted the selection so that I could use the paintbucket tool to colour in the strands. This paintbucket tool helped to replace the pens Glaso used to colour his poster in. Since I made my background colour black, I used the eraser tool to help me outline each strand. This eraser tool helped me replace the fine liner or pen used to outline the original poster. Furthermore, I used the paintbrush to clean up spots that the magnetic lasso tool had missed out. This in turn helped mimic Glaso’s style in the poster as he had to make sure all parts of his poster were properly coloured.
All in all, I believed that the use of Photoshop in this particular example slowed me down in regards to recreating the Bob Dylan poster because the style the Glaso used is much more easier to replicate by hand.
Kenneth Noland:
Kenneth Noland, born in 1924, was a major American color-field painter. A color-field painting is a style that is characterized primarily by its large fields of flat, solid colour stained or spread across into the canvas; this creates a flat picture plane and areas of unbroken surfaces (Wikipedia, 2011). Noland’s styles of work were very strong “in the splendor of the colors and their taut control (EWB, 2005)” and were extremely abstract in feeling.
The historical origins of the image-making processes used originate from painting; however, what distinguished color field painting from abstract expression painting was the paint handling. The thing that lead to the innovation of paint handling was that artists sought to reduce formats to basic references to nature, drawing essentially simplified to repetitive regulated systems, and a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In the pursuit towards the direction of modern art, artists such as Noland wanted to present each painting as one cohesive, unified, monolithic image often within a series of related types (Wikipedia, 2011). The social and cultural impacts this image-making process produced were to rid art of superfluous rhetoric (Wikipedia, 2011).
The image I chose to re-create was Noland’s famous circle paintings. In these paintings he used a canvas and a paintbrush. For me to re-create this effect and draw perfect circles, I used the elliptical tool on 9 different layers for all the different sizes of the circles in the image. Photoshop has enabled us to create perfect circles without having to stress about if the circle was any less than perfect. Furthermore, after creating a grid system on Noland’s original image, I was able to precisely plant each circle at the same position as Noland’s. For the colour, I used the paint bucket tool to replace Noland’s brush strokes.
In conclusion, I found that Photoshop has created these tools to help us speed up the process of creating a work of art like Noland’s Circles without necessarily having his talent of making perfect circles by hand, colouring them in, and placing them in the perfect position. Although I may not have the eye for colour like Noland, Photoshop lets regular people like me create something much like Noland.
B) Cubism
From the years of 1907 to 1914, Cubism helped mark a decisive break from representative painting. This reflected a radical fissure in art, culture, and politics (PS). Led by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Cubist painters pursued a geometric and abstract approach (PS). Cubist painters represented a new reality in paintings, which displayed several sides simultaneously, depicting radically fragmented objects (Moffat, n.d.).
Cubism, a technique that takes years to master is vastly simplified by Photoshop. The Marquee tool is used as a fragmenter of the image and the layers helps to create all the different perspectives easily. The free transform function lets us warp the layers at different angles, a skill that is very hard to master by hand.
Impressionism
Impressionism was an art movement from the 19th century that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists. The things that led to this innovation were: the impact of the train, the impact of photography, the impact of oil painting from tubes, the impact of Nature and Light, and the impact of Time (Escobar, n.d.). In turn, this set in motion the idea of never using black colour, representing a flat bi-dimensional painting, long agile touches of brush strokes that were rich in painting material, and the introduction of landscapes as important subjects (Escobar, n.d.).
Photoshop has enabled us to easily recreate this type of style by having tools such as layers to separate the different techniques used, and special filters like Chalk and Charcoal, Brush Stroke, and Underpainting to imitate the techniques used to create the brush stroke effects. Furthermore, effects such as Luminosity, Brightness/Contrast, and Fade Painting help us to brighten up the image’s final look so it resembles the impressionists way of never using the colour black (Geesley, 2010).
C) Documentary
Documentary photography typically refers to a popular form of photography, which is used to record historical and significant events. In this technique, the photographer produces objective, truthful, and usually candid photography of a particular subject or people. The thing that led to this innovation was the need to accurately describe the hidden, forbidden, unknown, or difficult-to-access circumstances at the time, dating back to the early 1850s (Wikipedia, 2011). These photographs replaced the need for artists on the battlefield trying to depict the scenes and the inaccuracy of stories being retold. There were three phases of this technique: conveying visual reality, social reality, and psychological reality. The social and cultural impacts of this include it being an activist’s expression of ideology, “a vector connecting the different realities of people around the world (Answers, 2005).
The way that Photoshop has incorporate these techniques is by enabling us to choose any picture and turn it into a documentary style photo. We are able to do this by creating different layers so that we can apply different techniques at the same time, helping us desaturate photos to give it a more grittier look, and creating a Curves adjustment layer to help make the image appear darker and more of a documentary “feel”.
Silk-screening
Silk-screening first appeared during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) in China. It was originally used as a popular method to print on linen, silk and other fine fabrics, and expensive wallpaper; however, artists later adopted it as a convenient and expressive repeatable medium for duplication (Wikipedia, 2011). Silk-screening has helped result in the boom in t-shirts and is a preferred process when creating large batches of posters or display stands. Typically, Andy Warhol is given credit for making silk-screening popular as he printed Marilyn Monroe in garish colours. (Wikipedia, 2011)
Photoshop vastly simplifies a process that takes experience and lots of practice as we can create layers and cut away parts of the picture we need to edit. Since silk-screen images are very high contrast, we are lucky that we do not need to be very precise. We make it high contrast by playing with the threshold and getting the essential shapes of the picture. After creating multiple layers like one would with silk-screens, we can apply different colours with ease and save a lot of time from doing it in the real process. Once we have done all the colours and layers, we can arrange four versions of the image into one canvas and create an Andy Warhol style silk-screen print. Now anyone can be an Andy Warhol!
Works Cited
Answers (2005) Documentary Photography. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://www.answers.com/topic/documentary-photography-1
Edwards, O. (2010) Sign of the Times: Bob Dylan. Retrieved February 2, 2011 from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Sign-of-the-Times-Bob- Dylan.html
Encyclopedia of World Biography (2005) Kenneth Noland. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://www.bookrags.com/biography/kenneth-noland/
Escobar, B. A. (n.d.) Introduction: Impressionism, Retrieved February 4, 2011 from http://www.spanisharts.com/history/del_impres_s.XX/impresionismo/i_im presionismo.html
Geesley, J (2010) How to Make a Digital Impressionistic Art. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://www.ehow.com/how_6605443_make-digital- impressionistic-art.html
Moffat, C. A. (n.d) Cubism: The Art History Archive. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://www.lilithgallery.com/arthistory/cubism/
Milton Glaser Biography, (n.d.) Milton Glaser Biography. Retrieved February 7, 2011 from http://rogallery.com/Glaser_Milton/Glaser-bio.htm
Perman, S. (2006) The © and Mind of Milton Glaser. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2006/id20060103_37 0096.htm
PhotoshopSupport (2005) Photoshop Fine Art Effects Cookbook “Cubism”. Retrieved February 7, 2011 from file:///Users/superlee/Downloads/Photoshop%20Cubism%20- %20Create%20A%20Cubist%20Look%20In%20Photoshop%20- %20Art%20Effeccts%20%7C%20PhotoshopSupport.com.webarchive
Wikipedia (2011) Color Field. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Field
Wikipedia (2011) Documentary Photography, Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_photography
Wikipedia (2011) Screen Printing, Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_printing