Monday, August 8, 2016

Techno Follies... Scanners, Graphite and Poster Edges

Every week for the past year or so I have posted an image from my series "New Views of Mount Fuji". This past week I worked on a graphite drawing of Chubby Checker with an acrylic ink background. Anxious to post the piece over the weekend I scanned the drawing on my printer at 300 dpi and while not crazy about the results, put up the image.

The scanner output was surprising ... as far as the background was concerned, scanning produced an interesting modulation of the color, but it was washed out... the ink was a hot pink and revisions in Preview were unsatisfactory. The larger problem, however, was the way the graphite reproduced, I had taken quite a bit of care with the piece, but without controlled lighting and the skill of my GoTo photographer, the drawing appeared uneven. Shadows and highlights were random at best. Clumsy at worst.

I decided to put the scanned drawing into Photoshop, adjusted the color bringing it closer to the original background, tinted the foreground and used the Poster Edges filter. The filter grabbed the graphite and produced what I think is a great range of textural effects. I then added the smallest highlights in pale pink with the Paintbrush tool on Mr. Checker's shoes. 

If I had just used a copy of my original reference photo in Poster Edges the results would not have been the same. The drawing, however altered by the scan, added character to what would have been an otherwise stiff and mechanical reproduction. I believe that the whole here is greater than the sum of the parts. I've included the original scan on the left and the digital modification on the right. 




Please click on the image to enlarge.
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click on the link to the right in the "Labels" column 
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