Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Self-Portrait Challenge: Pop Art, Week 2

For the second week of June's Self-Portrait Challenge: Pop Art I decided to turn my portrait into a cartoon. First I did some research into different cartoon styles and I discovered something interesting. Did you know if you go to Google Image Search and type in "cartoon woman" that most of your results will be porn? Lots and lots and LOTS of porn. Um, yeah, I didn't know that either. Now I do. I still don't know why, mind you, (and don't think I want to know!), but, well...there's your tip for the day. And hey! All of you who arrived at this blog entry from Google because you were looking for porn might as well go elsewhere. Nothing to see here. Move along. On the other hand, those of you who came here looking for a Pop Art portrait can take your pick of two. I first did this one: And then I made it all dotty, like you'd see in a newspaper: For those who like to hear the technical details on this sort of thing, I started with a photo of myself and used the pencil tool (in Photoshop Elements) to draw black outlines along the major features of my face, neck, hair and shirt. I made sure I had a bunch of closed shapes so I could use the fill tool and then started choosing colors and filling in the various shapes. At the end I added the thought bubble and that finished off the first one. Then after saving that, I used the color half-tone feature to make the second version "dotty." I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I figured I'd just share them both! Now I ask you, why couldn't June be one of those months with five Tuesdays? I already have 4 more possible Pop Art self-portraits (all quite different) and only 2 weeks left after today! I think this theme is a blast!