Printing To A T-Shirt.

For my assignment, in which I used my image for The Angel Of Vengeance, I did end up printing onto a t-shirt. 

It was fairly straightforward, and cheap. I've had transfer paper sitting in one of my draws for several years, but the same product can still be picked up from anywhere around $20, and I bought two black t-shirts from a local store (they were two for $5). They had to be black, because my transfer paper was for dark fabrics. 

After that, I just followed the instructions provided with the paper itself. Slip a sheet into the printer and print the image onto said paper. Allow it to dry for thirty minutes. 

Take the t-shirt and place it on a hard service (not an ironing board!) and then iron it to make sure it's flat. Allow it to cool. 

Peel off the backing paper of the transfer, and place the image where you want it on the shirt. After that, you cover it with baking paper and iron it on for about a minute. (You never iron it without the baking paper, as this will damage both the image and the iron!) 

And that was that. 

My attempts were not perfect, but they weren't bad, either. Overall, I was very happy with the end result.

The Angel Of Vengeance: Printing.

Now that I have my third assignment basically completed (I'm still bouncing some ideas around about the look - I'm a little iffy with the background at the moment) I've been thinking about how I want to print it. My initial thought was an A3 poster, as I created the file in A3 and a poster seemed like a practical idea. But I don't have access to a printer that can do such a thing, and I want to be a little more creative. 

So I have two ideas that I'm dwelling on. 

The first is to use the gel medium from my wood-printing assignment to print the image on canvas. I haven't yet tested the way that this would look, and as I'd be printing A4 it would take quite a bit of calculating to make sure everything lined up properly and looked the way it was supposed to. I should also mention that the canvas I bought for this idea ended up being much bigger than A3, and I haven't been able to locate A3-sized canvas just yet. 

The second is to print onto a shirt. This was one of my very first ideas, before I even had my image, and Charles brought it up again the other day as a suggestion. I agreed that it was a suitable idea. I've had transfer paper for dark coloured shirts lying around for years, so maybe it's time I use it. I bought some cheap black shirts on the weekend (two for $5!) so I'll be giving that a shot sometime soon.

The Angel Of Vengeance: Coming Together.

I've been working on The Angel Of Vengeance book cover/poster/whatever it is, and I'm liking the way that things are going so far. I took what I have so far to class on Wednesday, to ask Ben whether or not it would be suitable as my assignment, and he said I was on the right track. So that's a good thing. 

In the spirit of being more open with my work, like last time, here's some insight into what I have so far. 

These are the images that I started out with: 

Yes, even the text was a photo! I also used two pictures of the sky (with clouds) as the background for my image, but they're on a different hard drive and therefore not accessible to me at the moment. But every photo is mine, was taken by me, etc. 

Put together, here is what I have complied so far: 

I'm not quite ready to call it done yet, though I don't know what more I might be adding to it.

Assignmenting...Eventually.

The past few weeks have not been good to me. I've fallen off a ladder, contracted ringworm from a cat we rescued, and not completed anything productive that I had intended to. I have, at least, been thinking about my assignments - so that's a start, right? 

To Do

• catch up on blog; 
• bring workbook up to speed; 
• decide on physical or digital visual diary - complete that; 
• come up with ideas for photo-essay fill-flash assignment - shoot it; 
• complete part three of movements assignment; 
• finish portfolio - work out mounting. 

I've been thinking mostly about part three of the movements assignment, trying to work out what I want to do, how I want to do it, how I'm going to print it. For the most part, I get no ideas - except for one that I've had in the back of my mind, that I'm likely just going to go for. 

It's always been an idea I've had, but I've thought about it more and more since Ben asked me about it. I'm a writer - why have I never created any images to correspond to the stories that I'm working on? Maybe it's time I do that. The digital manipulation would come in because I write fantasy, but how would such an image correspond to a movement? I've already tackled modern surrealism. 

I've been thinking I'll just ignore the movement thing and go for gold. This is the last assignment - I want to create something I can be happy with. I might not be able to find the perfect model, but I can at least try to create a stunning image. 

Likewise, I'll hopefully be getting some more shots for my portfolio. I'm shooting Xavier Rudd at Big Top Luna Park, a venue that will at the very least have better lighting than the Hi-Fi. 

I'm hoping to get something productive done before heading back to TAFE next week.

Post-Modernism.

I was off sick for two weeks, so I completely missed the classes on Post-Modernism and am only now finding the time to start catching up on that. So here we go. 

Post-Modernism

From the mid- to late-1960's, as Abstract Expressionism had been falling out of favour, many artists began turning to such movements as Conceptualism, Super-Realism and Neo-Expressionism - all precursors to Post-Modernism. 

So what is Post-Modernism? According to our PowerPoint presentation, it is the rejection of the utopian aspects of modernism; Wikipedia describes it as skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It also says that post-modernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. 

Cindy Sherman

One of the photographers mentioned in the slideshow is Cindy Sherman. Her name is familiar to me, though I can't remember why. Sherman is best known for her conceptual portraits, something that I want to get into myself, so she seems like a good person to research. 

And going through her images now, I know where I have heard her name - John Dobson mentioned her in class, as he loved the images that she takes of dolls. Personally I find them to be a little creepy, though I know many people were inspired by said images.

More Cubism.

After being inspired by this photo and this photo, I took my own shot at cubism: 

I liked the way that the first shot looked like it was shot through a prism or even a kaleidoscope, but I also liked the simplicity of the second shot - so I worked to combine them. I didn't like the idea of an entire joiner.

Obviously I've also done some colour editing with this, simply because I didn't like the original colours - and why not experiment, right?

Cubism.

Movements, once again. 

Cubism

Cubism was a movement that was started in the early twentieth century by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, both of whom were influenced by the post-impressionist Paul Cezanne, who rejected the traditional artists' ideas on perspective. Cubism is based around the idea of using shapes - cubes, cones, spheres, etc. - to show an image from many different perspectives, thus showing volume and the passage of time.

No doubt the most famous artist related to this movement is Picasso, as his paintings are known world-wide and are cited as the inspiration for many works of Cubism today.

Joshua Naylor

In photography, Cubism is often seen in the form of "Joiners" - a series of photographs that are taken and then joined together to create one image, such as this example by Joshua Naylor:

I like this example because although it is one image, it is made up of several different images all relating to the one theme - people in their private spaces. I find this more interesting than joiners that show just one image. It gives me more to look at, tells more of a story, and I just find it attractive.

Before researching Cubism, I really wasn't a fan of it. Whenever the movement came to mind, I only ever thought of the few Picasso pieces that I knew of, with distorted faces and body parts. But after learning of joiners, and of the extremely long exposures by Michael Wesely, I've found that I have a liking for some aspects of it. 

Pop Art.

Another photography movement! 

Pop Art

Pop art came to be in the mid-1950's in Britain and in the late 1950's in the United States, and is still widely known and used today. It is a very distinctive style that involves using imagery from the pop culture of the day - for example, images taken from advertising and the news. Often seen in these images are bits and pieces from comic books, popular advertising and even clippings from photographs in newspapers. 

When most people think of pop art, the first thing that comes to mind are the bright colours and over-contrasty images. It also includes a lot of the halftone look, which is often seen in comic books. 

According to this website, there are five key characteristics of pop art. They are: 

• recognisable imagery, drawn from popular media and products; 
• usually very bright colours; 
• flat imagery influenced by comic books and newspaper photographs; 
• images of celebrities or fictional characters in comic books, advertisements and fan magazines; 
• in sculpture, an innovative use of media. 

Andy Warhol

Likely the most famous photographer associated with pop art is Andy Warhol. Even those who do not know his name likely know his famous painting of the Campbell's soup cans. Warhol's works, particularly his paintings, are some of the most expensive pieces that have ever been sold. One of his works, Eight Elvises, is the highest-selling painting to date. It sold for US$100million. 

Personally, I don't like pop art. I think it looks terrible. 

Modern Surrealism.

Wednesday had us continuing our research on surrealism to a degree, but we moved forward into modern surrealism. 

Modern Surrealism

I said that surrealism was one of my favourite movements, but I didn't know that modern surrealism existed! Modern surrealism is, I suppose, the movement that most of my favourite photographers fall into. It deals greatly with image manipulation, with making things look unreal, and I could never get enough of it.  

Like surrealism, when it comes to film this would be achieved with double exposures, putting things onto the negative, blending two negatives and making them one. It obviously got easier when the digital age came along, with the advent of programs like Photoshop and Illustrator.

I know, without a doubt, that my love of this movement stems from my love of reading and writing fantasy novels. The two go hand in hand. 

Jerry Uelsmann

Since I already know a fair few modern surrealists who use Photoshop as their main tool, I wanted to take a look at somebody who was doing this before the digital age came into being. Uelsmann is one such photographer.

Some of his images are so simple and yet so breathtaking. Then the more complex ones just blow my mind and make me wonder how he managed to do it.

Surrealism.

Today had us looking at our next photographic movement: surrealism. 

Surrealism

This is a movement that I was at least a little bit familiar with when we started out. Surrealism was all about the strange - making things look abnormal or unreal. 

These results were achieved by use of double exposure, distortion, manipulation of the negative, and many, many other ways. 

Philippe Halsman

I've mentioned previously that I briefly studied Halsman last year, so now is a good time to bring him up again. It is well known that he often collaborated with surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and as such produced many images that fall into this movement. By far his most famous, I believe, is Dali Atomicus. 

 

 Dali Atomicus.

Halsman was not only known for his surrealist work - he was also known for being a fashion photographer, and for having the most images featured as the cover of Life magazine before they stopped publication. But his fashion work was more in the style of the modernist. It's really only his collaborations with Dali that were surrealistic. 

I think it goes without saying that surrealism is one of my favourite movements. I just love it.

Modernism.

Yesterday it was back to studying photographic movements. 

Modernism

Unlike pictorialism, modernism is based around taking a "straight photograph" - that is, exactly what the camera sees without adding manipulation to the negative and so forth. Where the pictorialists went for soft focus, the modernists went for sharper images. 

Images were often taken in direct sunlight, as the harsher shadows were able to really reveal the form of the subject. 

This period stretched from 1867 - 1975 and included such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. 

One of my first thoughts was this - last year for our History assignments, I studied Phillipe Halsman. One of Halsman's most famous shots is Dali Atomicus, a shot of surrealist Salvador Dali surrounded by floating objects. This, among a few other surreal works of his, is what drew me to the photographer. Without needing to do further study, I know that I like the surreal. 

Edward Weston

The photographer that I did choose to study for this era was Edward Weston, who I had never heard of before yesterday.  He was considered a master of the "straight photograph" and was a member of the famous Group f/64, along with other greats such as Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham. He is most noted for his nudes and for his famous photograph of a pepper. 

Pepper #30

What I really like about this image is that it doesn't look like a simple pepper - as was discussed in class, it almost looks like a distorted human form. And in a way, it reminds me of another of my favourite photographers (Nikki Sixx, who I will have to do a post on later) in the way that it looks deformed, but it's still so beautiful and so very fascinating. 

I thoroughly enjoyed researching Weston, as his work was absolutely stunning. And it's easy enough to say that I enjoyed modernism a whole lot more than I enjoyed the pictorialist era.

Pictorialism and Secessionism.

Today in class we are looking at these two early photographic movements.

Pictorialism This style seems to entail taking a photograph and then making it look like a painting. Photographs lacked sharpness, were often printed in one or more colours that were not black and white, and were often manipulated to look like the prints had brush strokes in them. It was a style that developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, and was more focused on making sure that photography was considered an art form than it was on what was actually in front of the camera. Many people believed that the camera was nothing more than a tool to document reality, not create art.

Photo-Secession Photo-secession came about because of pictorialism. As defined by Wikipedia, it was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general, photographic pictorialism in general. It was a movement started by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day, and it held the viewpoint that the importance of a photograph was not what was in front of the camera, but the manipulation done to the image by the photographer so that they could get their vision across.

Pierre Dubreuil Pierre Dubreuil was a French photographer often referred to as a Modernist who laboured under a Pictorialist veil. He first started taking photos at the age of sixteen, in 1888, but it wasn't until 1896 that he began to become better known in the circle of pictorial photographers. He was also known as a creator of bizarre distoritions.

Between 1904 and 1930 he chose to use the Bromoil process to make his prints. This is a process that often resulted in soft, paint-like qualities, which was popular at the time and has started becoming popular again today.

Elephantaisie, 1908.
This is one of his more famous shots, evidently taken in Paris. Although I generally prefer sharper images, I find that I'm quite enjoying the painterly quality of this one. I also like that the subject is something unexpected, that the Eiffel Tower has been pushed into the background in favour of something that I haven't seen a thousand times before.

Pictorialism and photo-secessionism are probably not two movements that I would say I thoroughly enjoy. I don't mind looking at the style every now and then, but they aren't particular styles that I think I would really enjoy trying to portray.