WARHOL time

Hey Guys! Here are my Warhol impersonation photos! :) And a little on the man I'm being inspired by.

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”

-Babs

The HAUNTED LIBRARY! Boo!

This, my gentle reader, is the picture that I think expresses how much I love the magic of Photoshop. This photo is called “Haunting Memories”.

I started off with as basic and empty picture of a library I could find (which was actually kind of hard!). The picture was a little on the light side for me, so I heighted the contrast, and then fixed the lighting levels so that the “highlights” were darker. From there I decided to add a very light, white gradient to the top of the picture, which added a surreal look to the place (at least, in my opinion it did). Then, it was time to add the people. The first steps were same for all the people, trace the outside edge of the people with the “Magic Lasso” and delete everything BUT the people, then use the eraser to clean up the edges, and copy and paste the person onto the library. Once there, I adjusted their size to fit the perspective (the people on the top floor were also skewed a little to fit the angle of the original shot of the library) and then I adjusted their opacity. This is what made them look like ghosts. From there I did a simple clean up of the photos (The people on the balcony had their mid-sections erased so they looked like they were behind the banister, and the two women in the center were partially erased for the same effect, only with a table.)

I wanted this photo to be very similar to the “party scene” on the Haunted Mansion ride in Disneyland. Since I was recently there, the image was seared into my mind, and had a great influence over the final product. But, I also wanted to go deeper than that. Each of the black and white photos is from a different era (Victorian, 1900’s, 1920’s, 1930’s and 1950’s to be exact) like a stockpile of memories. I wanted it to seem like things had happened in that library, and here were the people to explain why it was important to them. Some of them notice the “onlooker” (which is you at the moment!) while others are wrapped up in their memories. Do I know their stories? No, but I would like to. It would be interesting to be in a circumstance like that. Paranormal, Right? Awesome, Correct? Yes. And it just goes to show that a little imagination and Photoshop can go a very long way.

-Babs