artistic

A few months back, a lynda.com subscriber wrote me to ask if I had documented a way to turn a portrait into an Andy Warhol-style silkscreen effect. By which she meant, the famous series of portraits of Marilyn Monroe. By now, we've seen enough of Marilyn on this site. (If only because Andy made her look like a drag queen.) So let's try out something different: Warhol's take on that beautiful and charming star of the silver screen, Mao Zedong. Just look at the sweet puss on that chiquita. Meow Mao!

(Quick note: This depiction of Mao is technically a serigraph. Both silkscreens and serigraphs are variants of screen-printing. While screen-printing is arguably the more accurate catch-all term, I use silkscreen because you're more likely to have a clue what I'm talking about.)

At the time, my answer was no. But I promised to explore the technique one day, and that one day is now. My first take on it was dekePod Episode 018: "The Andy Warhol Silkscreen Effect." But it's possible a couple of you might think that my spirited video explores the topic a little too quickly. (Tho in my defense, I've received very positive feedback from cheetahs and house flies.) Which is why I present this article, which you have to be a member to read. Read more » 

Those of you who read Part 1 of this article will recall that we're in the middle of converting a photographic portrait into a credible facsimile of a professionally rendered line drawing. Using a combination of the Photocopy filter, a bit of cleanup, and one layer each of solid black and solid white, we came up with the rather predictable effect pictured below. But this is just the base drawing. The truly amazing stuff starts now.

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In my capacity as a Photoshop expert, people ask me a lot of questions: "Where's the bathroom?" "Do you work here?" and my favorite "Who is your supervisor?" But the most popular question of all is: "How do I turn a photograph into a piece of line art?" (like the one below). It seems people come across line drawings in, say, The Wall Street Journal or on Barnes & Noble bags and assume Photoshop deserves the credit. After all, these drawings are photo-realistic, and photo-realism means Photoshop.

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