Art Exploration- Pop Art Self Portraits
For this project you will need to paint your self portrait in the style of Pop Art. To do this, you will use Photoshop’s “Posterize” Filter to give your self portrait a similar look to Pop Art. Your final photo print out should be an 8” x 10” self portrait with a minimum of three colors (black, gray and white). After gridding the photo, you will paint your self portrait using a monochromatic value scale. Monochromatic “Mono” means one and “chroma” means color so monochromatic means lights and darks of one color. For example, if you choose to paint your portrait in blue you would use tints and shades of blue. Value Scale Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. To make tints of a color, lighten the color with varying amounts of white paint. To make shades of a color, darken the color with varying amounts of black. Here is a value scale example. Notice that each color in the value scale is distinct. No two are the same.
How to “Posterize” a photograph in Adobe Photoshop
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Open Adobe Photoshop on the computer (Start > All programs > Adobe Master collection CS3 > Adobe Photoshop CS3) Open your photo in Photoshop (File > Open etc….) Change your photo to grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale….when it asks if you want to discard color, click “yes”) Use the “Posterize” Filter (Image > Adjustments > Posterize….Try out different numbers such as 3, 4 or 5. This will change the amount of colors in the photo to 3 colors, 4 colors or 5 colors. Choose the number that you like best for your photo.) Crop your photo so that you have an interesting compostion. Change the size of your photo (Image > Image size …..If it is a vertical portrait, change the height to 11 inches. If it is a horizontal portrait, change the width to about 11 inches.) If you have a horizontal portrait, you may want to change the page setup to “landscape” format by clicking on file > page setup and then choose “landscape”.