Celebrating the Biden-Harris victory with digital art
This piece is based on a photo I saw on India’s WION News here. It’s of the celebration which ensued when folks got wind of the Biden-Harris 2020 victory on Saturday, November 7.
I did this in a couple of marathon sessions using Mediachance Dynamic Auto Painter and Adobe Photoshop. I used DAP to create a few variations, then brought them into Photoshop as layers and began combining them in various ways, painting on layer masks, adjusting layer opacity, experimenting with different blending modes, and applying texture and lighting effects.
Please view at full resolution by clicking on the small image until you get the full 1600×900 image. (Note: Due to issues with WordPress.com, you might have to click twice to see the full-sized image.)
If this sort of technique interests you and you like the piece, my advice is to spend the time and make it personal. When you spend a lot of time developing a piece (even using digital tools), ideally something magical happens. You begin to see how the piece could be, and after making many small changes it gradually comes to express something that comes from within you.
Using DAP, it’s not hard to get a canvas filled with a riot of colours, textures, and brush strokes. What is challenging is to work with that raw material until it becomes a composition which reflects the human person behind it, or even divine inspiration.
From the point of view of my own development, I’m happy that I was able to bring in some naturalistic elements (hands and facial features) that make all the difference between an abstract collection of shapes and colours, and a portrait of two women which can actually make you feel something.
Sidebar: Flag shirts censored and uncensored
There may be various ordinances against wearing the American flag, i.e. ‘desecrating’ it. In a 2014 article about politics and late-night TV, the Columbia Journalism Review referenced a 1970 incident in which “Merv Griffin hosted Vietnam-war protestor Abbie Hoffman, whose iconic American flag shirt was censored by cbs lest it run afoul of flag-desecration laws.”
But desecration is very much in the eye of the beholder. Abbie Hoffman was a yippie and political dissident. Other TV personalities, including Pat Boone, could wear Old Glory without getting rousted. And as this pic Tweeted by Dann Vasquez amply illustrates, low-rent politicians may wrap themselves in the flag without actually wearing it:
Having censored Hoffman in 1970, cbs seems keen to compensate with wretched excess, vis-ร -vis this slideshow of 27 pics of flag-wearing celebs (none of them Hoffman):
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/flag-wearing-celebs/1/
Most of the displays are fairly tasteless, but I suppose Tilda Swinton manages to pull it off without looking like either a lady wrestler or country singer. ๐
Michael Howard
The views expressed are my own, and do not represent any other person or organization.
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