itzel

Monday, May 2, 2011

Hunger Prevention

Obtaining enough food for an active, healthy life is the most basic of human needs. Yet due to the recent economic downturn, approximately 49 million Americans now don’t have the means to meet their basic food necessities. Food insecure households, many with children, cannot achieve the fundamental element of well-being which is necessary of a healthy, wholesome life. Which is why organizations like Feeding America are stepping up to help and annually provide food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children who have fallen on hard times. Because of hard economic times many people have had trouble providing for their families and have had to cut down on basic necessities like food. Government programs and aids like food stamps have succeeded for 40 years as the nation’s most fundamental public program, safeguarding against hunger. This program has gotten extra support as a response to the recession with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provisions which boosted the program’s spending to $57.2 billion. Still the help has failed to reach the many that have fallen through the cracks and so it’s up to all of us to step up and make a difference.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Warhol

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”

Sunday, March 13, 2011

With this photograph I had the opportunity to explore Photoshop and use the techniques learned and my imagination to create an entirely new image. First I started by adding color to Tommy, the dog, with the threshold tool. To do this I lassoed his entire body and duplicated it ten times. Then I went to threshold and adjusted it from lightest to darkest going down each layer. After that I went back to layer 10 and lassoed Tommy, adjusted the tolerance to zero, pressed delete, selected a color and pressed ctrl and clicked on the layer then pressed ctrl again and pressed delete. I followed this process for each layer selecting a different shade of color, lightest to darkest. I decided to go with a brown/yellow color scheme with Tommy so I wanted the background to match this so I went up to filter and selected adjustment and then color filter and added a warming filter to 41%. I also wanted to add a gradient so I made a new layer and selected the gradient tool and then went up to color/style and selected chrome gradient and customized it by choosing the noise type with a roughness of 50% and picked the linear option. After this I created the gradient using the cursor and then picked the multiply option so that it would show up in my background. To this same gradient layer I decided to add an artistic filter to it so I went up to filter → artistic and selected plastic wrap. After making all these changes, I thought the background could still use some modifications to fit better with Tommy so I boosted the saturation to 100% in the gradient layer. I then turned to the background layer and boosted the saturation to 75% to bring out the red in the rocks and make the image more dramatic. After making these changes I was satisfied with how it came out and thought best to leave it as it was and not do anything else to it because it might take away from the image and just make it seem like Photoshop mess.

extra credit Photshop

This image is blending image where I took two images and made them into one. First I made both the images the same size. Then I duplicated the background layer and went to image-apply image. I decided to blend these two images because they were both related since they were both in the rose garden. The idea was to have the image of the rose garden reflected in the rocks.

This image is a cut and paste where I picked a background image and cut out Celine and Michelle from another image and put them here. The background image was from the landscape assignment and I did some alterations to it. I added a gradient layer and a photo filter as well as increase the saturation. After that I picked a picture of Michelle and Celine in a Mercy rally and lassoed them and put them in a new layer. Then I added that layer to my background image.

This image is a depth of field where I took an architecture shot and increased the depth of field. First I took an image from the architecture assignment and duplicated it. Then I selected my focal point which was the building. I clicked on "Quick Mask" and went to filter-blur-gaussian blur and then I picked the radius. After that I exited quick mask and went to view channels, alpha 1 and then layers, select layer 1. To finish it up I wen to filter-blur-lens blur ans then depth map- select alpha 1 and invert.

With this image I experimented with the threshold. I duplicated the layer and lassoed Tommy and made a new layer of him. Then I duplicated that layer ten times and adjusted the threshold in each from lightest to darkest. I then went back and added a different shade of pink to each, going form darkest to lightest. To do this I started with layer ten and went to lasso and picked a tolerance of zero. Then I clicked ctrl and the layer and then delete and repeated the process. After that I edited the background by adjusting the color to a pink like Tommy.

With this image I first lassoed Tommy and put him in a new layer. Then I duplicated 10 layers of him and did a different threshold for each from lightest to darkest. Then I added color to each from darkest to lightest shade of blue. After that I added texture to the shot by picking an artistic filter. I then added a gradient of blue in a new layer and used a fill of 45% to add a blue hue to the whole image. Then I decided to fisheye his face so I selected it with the elliptical marquee tool and went to filter-distort-spherize.