Through the Eyes of Miki

Monday, May 2, 2011

PSA

Topic: Cyberbullying

Cyber bullying has not always been such an important issue. The creation of cell phones, emails and social networking sites have allowed cyber bullying to flourish. The amount of children creating facebook or formspring accounts are growing and so are the amount of children being bullied. Children and teens are taking advantage of facebook, formspring, twitter and email to bully their classmates or even complete strangers. More than 1 in 3 kids have experienced cyber threats. Many have said it happened more than once. Over half of cyber bullying victims do not tell their parents or anyone else that they are being bullied. Roughly around 30,000 kids have committed suicide because they have been cyber bullied. These statistics are eye opening and everyone needs to become aware. If people know what is going on, these statistics can dwindle down. If you know anyone who is being bullied or if you yourself is experiencing this, call the National Bullying Helpline at 01380-729476.

Monday, March 21, 2011

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”

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Extra Credit-Photoshop (blending)

Before creating this final product, I chose two different pictures. One was a shot of the girls in blue and another was a shot of Jana and Jenna holding hands and looking back at the camera. I chose the girls in blue to be my target picture. I then made another background layer. After that, I clicked on image and then apply image. In the source vs. target image, I chose the picture of Jana and Jenna. Under types of of layer blends, I chose soft light. Once the images were blended. I used the poster edges filter to add more effect.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Photoshop Reflection: "K2 in SF"

To create this photo, I used several techniques that I recently learned in Photoshop. Before starting, I chose two separate photographs. I took a picture of the Kairos 2 team and another picture of Crissy Field in San Francisco. The K2 picture was originally taken outside of the Presentation Center. The Crissy field picture was empty. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the people in the Kairos photo. I then copy and pasted it to the Crissy field picture. I used the free transform tool to maneuver the picture of the leaders and make them a proportionate size to the background. I then used the eraser tool to erase any background left from the Kairos original picture. For example, there were patches of green grass around the people’s feet so I used the eraser tool to take that out. The tool erases things from the original and leaves the background to make it look more realistic.

After cleaning the photo up, I used the edge burn technique. I created four new layers and selected black as my background color. I unchecked all of the boxes on each layer except for the layer I was working with. Using the gradient tool, I added gradient to one corner per layer. I also made sure that each layer had multiply selected. After adding gradient, I made sure all boxes were checked. Once the edge burns were put on, I changed the filter. I used the film grain artistic filter for the background and the poster edge filter for the people. In addition, I changed the brightness and contrast of the sky. I changed the brightness of the sky to have less clouds and look more like a foggy day rather than sunny.