Art Created From Pictures

I promised I'd show you some of the pictures I have been working on lately. They will show up here kind of small so they won't have the same impact as the real thing but you can get the idea. I'll start with four pictures that I created for my friends.

My hand coloured from black and white, posterized and blown up to 24 x36.

I came across an old black and white photo from the US Government, Farm Security Administration. Since all works done by US government agencies are not copyright protected, I thought this shot would make a good gift for my friends Gary and Ann who have a beautiful home in Crossville TN where this was taken in the 1930's or 40's. Ann has a huge Coca Cola collection and I think this poster would look great in her Coke room.

Here's the original black and white photo.

You can see, if you look carefully, that I actually had to "manufacture" more bricks at the top of the building and more pavement down at the bottom near the signature. This is because the original picture was not tall enough to fit on a 24 x 36 poster. I get my pictures printed at Costco so I have to adhere to their sizes or cut the posters down to a smaller size. Since there are inexpensive poster frames for this standard size, I had to alter the picture to fit, but it worked out well. You can't even tell I added bricks, pavement and cloudy sky.

Barb and Barry's dog Somerset eagerly awaits the new paint job.

If you click on the picture you can see that I made this montage into a cutesy watercolour.

I reversed the other dogs and got rid of the background.

The picture of Somerset I took myself last fall, then I added some other dogs and these two city workers in the background. I coloured them up, added a watercolour effect and overlayed that all with a posterization effect.

The city workers were in black and white.

 

This is my picture of Somerset.

This is a "watercolour" made from a web cam view.

For my good friends John and Linda who live in Grand Bend (when they're not in Florida) I created this big 16 x 20 watercolour that I plan to mount  and present to them so they can see what Grand Bend looks like in winter. It's made from a "lo-res" web cam picture. Click here to see the web cam.

This was a very old 1909 postcard.

The faded old 1909 postcard was re-invigorated.

With Photoshop you can take the scanned postcard of Grand Bend Harbour and bring back the faded colours. You can pump up the intensity and add effects. To start with, be sure to use pictures older than 1923 or non-copyrighted material so there is no danger of copyright infringement. In my next posting I'll show you some of my "commercial" artwork that I intend to try and sell through "quaint" dealers in various places around SW Ontario.

Send me an email if you want to find out more about altering your photos or other non-copyright materials into interesting new art.

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