Carlotta On Canvas

Lately, I've been applying various "artistic effects" to many (most?) of the images I see (mine & others). In particular, I enjoy the "brush strokes" effect a lot. There could be a lot of reasons:

I've come to admire the cerebral & perception process involved in creating paintings. My favorite: Vincent van Gogh.
My eyes are aging, and I just don't see fine details like I used to.
For a long time, I've always been fascinated how simple pictures can convey lots of information.
I like seeing how a simple brush stroke can convey a world of information.

I've been doing these artistic effects for a while, and I've been sharing these pictures on this web site. Frankly, not too many people have responded favorably to these images, but that's okay. I'm still fascinated, and I've been applying these effects to more & more images.

So, as a compromise, I'll include the artistic effect images here, on a separate page.

I'm going to experiment with various ways of presenting these heavily modified images. Here, I'm showing a small copy of the original image with the normal sized copy of the modified image.

Feedback on the various presentation alternatives would be appreciated.

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Same idea, but with a bigger copy of the original image.

No copy of the original image this time. Go check the More Melted World page for the original.

Converting color to monochromatic is another form of abstraction. In this example, I actually apply the brush stroke effect on the sepia version of the image (and bumping up the saturation afterwards). I still like the effect here. Pull your eyes away from Carlotta for a second, check out the chair. That's kinda what my vision is like on its bad days.

In particular, I like how the brush stroke effect highlights the play of light & dark. And that's my approach to photography: more than anything else, I like the play of light & dark tones across the image space. Applying this effect reduces the image down to the parts I like most.

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In fact, now that I think about it, that's a significant exercise for all students of photography -- at its most basic, photography is all about light, and light is what we react to. That image above is not a photograph of a lovely nude woman on a big comfy chair -- it is a record of light bouncing off those things. It's all about light & tone.

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I am in the habit of "deconstructing" the pictures I see -- I like to figure out how the image was put together, with particular attention to how the image was lit. If you are working in a studio, you are creating the lighting, so knowing how other photographs were lit is a great learning device.

I note that using this brush stroke effect does remove a great deal of detail from the image, but the lighting scheme remains. In fact, it seems easier to identify the lighting elements without the distraction of the details.

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I'm including a version of the original image here on purpose. To be honest, I don't like the original: the lighting, tonality, and pose are fine, but I just didn't like the expression on Carlotta's face. But when I abstract the image with the brush stroke effect, the exact expression on Carlotta's face gets lost. Therefore, here's a case where I like the abstracted image a lot more than the original.

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By far, the "brush strokes" effect is my favorite, and to me, it works well for both B&W and color originals. The "enamel" effect is my second favorite. In fact, these two effects are the only ones I try regularly.

Here are examples of these two effects on this particular image.

I should point out that these effects are filters that accept a wide range of parameters. For example, when applying the "brush strokes" effect, one can adjust the size of the brush, the length of the strokes, the angle of the light, etc. Same thing with the "enamel" effect -- there are plenty of adjustments to be made. In this example, I chose to eliminate a big lot of the detail, making the resulting image very abstract.

I do like the "enamel" effect a lot, too. You can barely recognize the figure (if at all), and the colors that appear are often exciting. See the image below for another example of the enamel effect.

Looks interesting, right?

Here's another presentation alternative -- presenting the artistic effect images along with the original image.

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I really, really, really like how the brush stroke effect turns out with the black background / harsh light images. The whole image decomposes into a couple dozen brush strokes, yet the light & the movement comes through.

I've included this particular image not because I like it but more because I don't. I use the same default settings each time I apply the brush strokes effect (and then tweak them as necessary) -- here is this particular image with the default settings. It is interesting that you can still recognize Carlotta despite the abstractions, but still I don't like it:

There's a principle -- use the largest brush stroke that is comfortable. Here, the brush strokes are too small, I think.
I am beginning to feel that the brush strokes effect is more effective when the lighting is more dramatic. The original image here has more subtle & gentle lighitng.

I'm sure that I could make improvement via tweaking, but I'm not sure the end results would be worth it in this case.

I expect that I'm going to continue experimenting with these (and other) artistic effects for quite some time to come.

By applying these artistic effects, my admiration for painters has increased. In particular, I enjoy those paintings that can capture wonderful light. I'm a photographer, and I'm not likely to be satisfied with the results if I were to pick up some paint brushes, but still, I would love to be able to create a great & lively painting from a blank canvas.

As far as presentation goes -- I don't think I like keeping all the effects images on their own page -- I prefer to incorporate the effects images on the pages with the original image. I also am inclined to include fewer artistic effects images than are presented here. I'm open to feedback, however. We'll see -- it's a journey, not a destination.

Working with Carlotta is a joy -- she is terrific, especially when we can break away from the standard poses & work on stuff that's inspired by the moment. I hope to work with Carlotta again soon.