texture

I've long had a fascination with simulating Andy Warhol-style serigraphs in Photoshop. Regular readers of this blog may recall dekePod episode 18: "The Andy Warhol Silkscreen Effect" from nearly four years ago.

Frankly, tho, looking back on that effect, it sucks. And at the risk of sounding like a self-righteous, born-again prig, so do everyone else's effects, including those that you can render automatically using Warhol-style device and computer apps. Because here's the thing: even though Warhol was an unapologetic capitalist who believed in exploiting art for money's sake, he wasn't an app or a rote set of instructions. He was an eccentric, oddball, affected, doll-hair-wearing, exceedingly commercial artist. In other words, in the broadest possible sense, Warhol was a human being. You know, like in the way Pluto is a planet.

Which is why for this and the next two weeks, I'm going to focus on that most classic of Warhol techniques, the mass-reproducible, celebrity-obsessed silkscreen/serigraph effect. Today, for example, I'll show you how to convert the portrait shot on the left (not an actual celebrity, but perhaps she deserves to be, also very nicely captured by photographer olly at Fotolia) to the work of highly theoretically high art on the right.

A musician friend of mine once told me, dismissively, that Johann Pachelbel wrote his famous Pachelbel's Canon in five minutes while taking a dump. (This isn't an actual fact. It was just my buddy busting Pachelbel's chops.) Difference is, Andy Dub whipped out his creations in a matter of hours, charged thousands of $$$ for them, and later, after he kicked it, Warhol's stuff dredged up millions in postmortem auctions. (Poor toilet-bound Pachelbel: like all musicians, he could not say the same.)

So I guess my point is this: wanna be an artist and get ahead in life and still have people think you're a legitimate talent? Without wearing doll hair? Well, gosh, dunno if that's possible, but here's a start. Read more » 

One of the great things about Deke's Techniques (for me anyway) is that it gives me the chance to explore, not just how vast and powerful programs like Photoshop and Illustrator work, but how they work together, and in real-world scenarios. For example, this week, I show you how to take a couple of cloud photographs (Photoshop) and cram them into some vector-based text objects (Illustrator), replete with strokes and drop shadows.

Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

Today's technique is all about mapping a couple of textures onto a portrait photograph. The textures in question happen to be a bit of alabaster and a travertine tile (the images hail from the Fotolia image library), but they could be anything. And it's all accomplished using Photoshop's advanced blending options. Read more » 

Hey gang,

Today, I am on a plane flying halfway across the world on a week-long vacation. But thanks to the miracle of me writing this post four days in advance, I appear to be "here" today. Wherever "here" is.

Anyway, "here's" the thing: Today marks the second in my "never-ending" series of Deke's Techniques. (That's right: I will die, you will die, the human race will die, the robot overlords who destroyed us will die. And yet---I don't understand how---Deke's Techniques will continue. When the Vulcans discover Earth, this is all they will find. I know, when I first heard, I was like: how messed up is that?)

Today's episode is about using type in Photoshop to brand an image. Imagine that your image is a cow or a pig. And the type is a big hot branding iron. Only much gentler on both the giver and receiver. (Come on, no one wants to hurt livestock! Unless, you know, if a cheerful young fattened pig accidentally died, in which case I'd totally throw down for a plate-full of its bacon.) Here's Colleen's official description: Read more »