Piece 4 - Photography

My fourth piece is a repetition on 5 images that i narrowed down to from the many that i took while spending time around town.
The first is a painting of a bird i saw against wall, the second is of a house, the thrid is of a spray painted painting on a wall, the fourth of brighton beach and the fifth was an interesting picture i found on a wall.

More photos from my Photography Expedition

Here i'll just include more photos from my expedition. Enjoy!

My Photography Expedition

Quite a while ago i remember telling y'all that i'd be going on a photo expedition around Melbourne, trying to capture anything that my friend and i thought was interesting and captured the essence of Melbourne. We went on one very long ago, but i totally forgot about uploading some of the photos that we took! We went around areas like Fitzroy, Brunswick, the Botanical Gardens and Melbourne City. Now they are here to share

The first few photos are mainly ones of really interesting graffiti we saw around town.

It was really appealing when i came to realise most of the really good graffiti images that we saw were on places where many wouldn't pay much attention to. E.g. bottom of a wall, side of a wall.

(Just had to include this image of these Mr. Men

characters!)

Cafe Segovia - From the eye of the fly

To my disappointment, my idea of using a surveillance video from work to capture the repetition on a daily basis of waitresses and bartenders would not have worked out. I was feeling rather depressed that all recordings were on DVD, so I wouldn’t have been able to edit it.

For days and weeks i was constantly pondering on what to do. At the beginning I came up with the idea of videoing different baristas making coffee, each barista recorded 10 minutes at a time. But I re-thought the idea and realized how boring a video like that would have turned out! Then all of a sudden i had a light bulb moment and thought ‘Well why I can’t make a surveillance video myself!’. I would have been much more proud of my work anyway knowing that i started everything from scratch.

So i brought a camcorder along with me one evening and visited Cafe Segovia. I tried to gather as much footage as i could, focusing on different workers and the tasks they were carrying out at 2 minute intrevals at a time. i essentially wanted to capture Melbourne's essentric energy through its café scene - and the repetition of the wait and bar staff would have added that little bit extra amusement!

I ued Final Cut Pro to edit and compose my movie. It was SUCH a long and tedious process! I was sitting on my bottom for over 48 hours just to work out how to use the program - that was a little frustrating! I relied a lot on You Tube for assistance, however as always some tips helped and some didn't.



I began by capturing my footage onto the computer. I opened Final Cut Pro and streamed the video. I selected In and Out to cut the sections i wanted to begin from and where i wanted to end. I then dragged these down into my time frame.
Originally i wanted to make multiple movies and set them out as a continuous diagonal pattern just like what i've dont with my oher pieces but if i was to do that, the screens would have been too small. So i only changed the scale of each movie to no less than 30. I also added a background colour and fitted this in sync with my timeframe. Once i was happy with a section playing i would copy and paste and make a new section on the same time frame and adjust the In and Out channels accordingly to suit me. Afer i was happy with everything i adjusted the audio to each time frame and when different things started streaming. It took very long to work out but defintely felt beneficial in the end!

Finally, transitions were added to give the movie a softer entrance and exit

Piece 3 – Capturing Text Art

This is the original image that I will be using for my third piece. It is an image taken while out for a coffee with a friend.

















I hope to incorporate text art into my third piece. While I was search the internet for quotes, I came across this little beauty and thought it was hilarious! It is a manipulation of bible scripture Psalms 23: 1-6, where the author has replaced God with coffee, trying to reinforce its’ importance in life.

“Caffeine is my shepherd; I shall not doze
It maketh me to wake in green pastures
It leadeth me beyond the sleeping masses
It restoreth my buzz
It leadeth me in the paths of consciousness for its name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of addiction,
I will fear no Equal™
For thou art with me; thy cream and thy sugar they comfort me
Thou preparest a carafe before me in the presence of The Starbucks
Thou anointest my day with pep; my mug runneth over
Surely richness and taste shall follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the House of Mochas forever”

This is an extract of Psalm 23:1-6 from the New World Translation bible

23 Jehovah is my Shepherd.
I shall lack nothing.
2 In grassy pastures he makes me lie down;
By well-watered resting-places he conducts me.
3 My soul he refreshes.
He leads me in the tracks of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk in the valley of deep shadow,
I fear nothing bad,
For you are with me;
Your rod and your staff are the things that comfort me.
5 You arrange before me a table in front of those showing hostility to me.
With oil you have greased my head;
My cup is well filled.
6 Surely goodness and loving-kindness themselves will pursue me all the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah to the length of days.

I played around with various functions and settings using Photoshop and in the end chose these two images to work with



Both these images were adjusted by using different filters on Photoshop


I originally wanted to combine these two images together to make a repetitive mural but it was constant error! I had no idea what i was doing so resulted to googling YouTube, yet still Epic Fail! I tried doing it on Illustrator and Photoshop but just couldnt find the right functions to use - or if its even possible? Would have made my life a lot easier! So instead I used Photoshop, and still wanting to achieve the idea of having one large mural with the quote over it I proceeded with writing a few words of the quote on each photo and had the intention of joining them together.



But i took forever just creating these two pieces, trying to align the letters of each photo the same. It was never perfect and got every frustrating so instead i thought of the idea a repetitive mural going down vertically and every photograph would have a sentence. When joined together it would make the above quote. Her is an exxample of my finished piece












































































































There was a lot of hassle with this piece. It all began when the photos didnt come out properly when i developed them. The font kept on getting cut off, so i started printing multiple copies at a larger scale. But it still didnt fix the probelm so i had to go home and change where the font was sitting.
My piece 3 - text art

Piece 2 - The Andy Warhol silk screen effect

Warhol was the evil genius of the 1960’s art world:

"In August 62 I started doing silk-screens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silk-screening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face the first Marilyn’s"

Marilyn, a beloved screen icon conveniently commits suicide and Warhol exploits her death for personal gain = Evil & Genius

I began with a photo I captured using my mobile phone and conituned by using Photoshop and experimented with its various settings for my art piece. I started by going to the Channels panel and clicked on the RBG composite, I then created for myself an Alpha channel. I played around with different functions and pushed up the contrast levels and experimented with my values until I achieved harsh contrast levels.

Using the brush tool I took away all the harsh lines that didn’t contribute to the photo and inverted the mask, switched palettes, made a new layer and filled the selection with the desired colour.

I again made another layer, selected a region and used the lasso tool to fill it with a colour. I continued playing around with various tools, colours and when I was happy I synced all my work together.

I began with a photograph I took from my mobile phone of a few stools I saw on Degraves Street. I was excited when I saw all the chairs aligned together because it reflected on repetition beautifully! I saved the image onto my Mac hard-drive so was unable to load it onto my laptop but this is a photograph that i found - this image is a photo of the orginal that i wook off the computer to show a friend the progress of my work





















I was especially inspired by Warhol's piece Che, 1962 - so my colours that i have used are very similar to his.

Here are just examples of a few compositions that i created. I will post a photo of my finished product when i align and finish composing them.








This is my completed piece. In the beginning I printed a whole batch of these photographs using a matte finish. This took away all the fine detail so i re-printed them all again but this time in gloss. These photographs are repeated in a diagonal pattern and are placed on masonite and covered with a clear piece of plastic.





A close up:

Week 7 - Digital Drawing and Painting

This week was a continuation from the previous week. We elaborated more about Corel Painter and the different effects that the program was capacle of creating.

I took the opportunity to work on my second piece.

I am a huge fan of repetition and have found artist Andy Warhol to have had a big influence on me. He is perhaps one of the most significant artists in our time who i believe captures the essence of repetition beautifully. He is one i deeply admire. Warhol is one of many artists who embodied the paradox of modernist art. His works were extraordinary, many of them such as:

Installation of Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962






and Che, 1962

I love how Warhol's work consisted of realistic renditions of popular everyday items. I hope to somehow incorporate these principles into my own artwork. I particularly like the colours that Warhol has used in Che, and therefore would love to incorporate some of his techniques into my won artwork