FemmeScape 1

The above was realized with Photoshop. Below is the digital model. Her dramatic pose defies gravity, but I think it works in its intended context.

Pose

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In this video Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek combine to create a new person. Start with two familiar faces and create someone vaguely familiar, who exists only in imagination.

»Now Playing on YouTube Cruz, Hayek : A Photo Never Taken

The La Gata video exposes the software foundation behind a digital media portrait that seems like someone you know.

The term “la Gata” is a tribute to these two Latina superstars. It’s a slang term that, loosely, means “female cat.” The proper Spanish word for cat is the masculine, “el Gato.”

The Making of La Gata

The La Gata painting and video were digitally produced using a variety popular software applicaitions running on ordinary computers.

Warhol-Sunglasses
What I like about Andy Warhol is that he knew how to "photoshop" before there was Photoshop.

Simply Liz by Andy Warhol

Warhol’s portrait of Elizabeth Taylor disappointed art investors this week when it sold for less than hoped for. Auctioned for $23.6 million, it seems to me that the painting is holding its value.

Small wonder that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan mentioned artwork in the same breath as real estate and investment portfolios when he wrote, "Stock and bond prices, homes, commercial real estate, paintings, and most everything else joined in the boom." Actor Hugh Grant, who sold the painting, realized a 665% increase over the six years he held on to his investment.

For those of you who are interested in art for art’s sake, Simply Liz’s sister painting Red Liz lives at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. To my own disappointment, she wasn’t actually on display the last time I went up there, so you may want to call ahead.

Warhol-Sunglasses 2×2

Two paintings of rock guitarist Vivian Campbell-Digital Media

According to Steven Samuel, “Digital art is still relatively unknown or even accepted fully by the arts community, but this will change.” Sam first creates a pencil drawing, which is scanned into Photoshop, and then uses a computer to create layer upon layer of color.

Guitar hero Vivian Campbell, depicted here, performed with a number of well-known 80’s rock bands, before joining Def Leopard. Campbell prefers playing a Gibson Les Paul these days, but I am pretty sure the guitar in these paintings (two superimposed) is a Kramer.

Guitar player using Whammy Bar-Digital Media

“This is a photograph that my son Michael posed for with his guitar. There is very little detail, but it is not required!” Sam lives in South Wales, UK.

Gearhead - May 23, 2003

Wet Edges - Nov 6, 2003

I would have guessed Painter, but it’s Adobe Photoshop.

Supposed Organic Life on Mars - False Color

My online buddy Mac Tonnies and I have been blogging since before they called it that. I have long since re-engineered my site to run Wordpress, and "broke the link" to these old images, but the Internet never forgets and the relentless programmatic "spiders" that cataloge the Web for "relevance" came looking for them.

A long time ago, in Internet time, Arthur C. Clarke made an offhand email remark about "tree-like" objects on Mars, which appeared to have no geological explanation. He might have known better, because once they’re on the network your words can be cross-referenced endlessly. At that time I thought, "Wouldn’t it be fun to show what organic life on Mars might look like?" (Keep in mind that these Mars things are really, really huge, and that this image was "colorized" by nothing but my imagination.)

Lowell Maps the Canals of Mars

Here we see astronomer Percival Lowell, as he meticulously documents the so-called canals on Mars. If you go in for high-tech, scientific "what-if" speculation, Mac Tonnies over at Posthuman Blues offers up the best around. But I am warning you, Mac, that anything you say (or imagine) could come back to haunt you.

Cafe LA

If Los Angeles isn’t actually glowing with heat these days, then it sure as heck feels like it! A transition from sun-streaked patio to unrelenting blue sky got me on my feet and on the street, to snap these photos of a coffee shop on Ventura Blvd. in Encino CA.

Lattice Detail

Blue Sky Detail

The photos, on-the-spot layout, and Photoshop finishing (back home) are all about working as quickly as possible to capture the "Look & Feel" of the place. I don’t know if the composition "works." I’ll leave that to you.

Zoom ~ Get the wallpaper

Sampling Space

This explodes a digital painting technique developed here earlier this year. Energetics and Cellular explored atomic-size energy concepts. Here we zoom way out to energy on a cosmic scale.

Detail

Did you know there’s a gaping hole in space?

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Brian Eno - A photo never taken

Although we’re not exactly sure what Shakespeare looked like or whether or not Da Vinci actually painted his own self-portrait, there is no historical anonymity for contemporary artists who live under the watchful gaze of the photographic eye. In fact, the same might be said about anybody who has a photo ID. It’s hopelessly likely that someone who takes an interest in you at some future date will have a good idea of what you looked like.

Enter a name, and you’ll turn up any number of photos of famous people. But, if you were searching for Brian Eno, you couldn’t have turned up this one, until today. That’s because it isn’t an actual photograph. Isn’t it interesting how human beings have the same demeanor, even over a span of decades? The photographs that seeded this image are years apart, but the "ghost" inside still shows through.

Eno - Before and after morphing

If you’re interested in Eno, San Francisco’s Laughing Squid, Scott Beale, has a great clip of Eno talking about his 77 million paintings.