Saturday, October 25, 2008

Applying a Conceptual Gaussian Blur to Painting and Graphic Art

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777—1885) was a German mathematician genius who contributed to many fields, including optics. Gaussian functions are still used in many fields, including state of the art computer image processing.

Photoshop users are familiar with a feature called Gaussian Blur with which you create and control a smooth blur of an image. I'm currently working on a series of images in which the traditional line between painting and graphics are blurred. One example is shown below.

Is it a painting or is it graphic design?
Both. It's also a wild beach rooster from Kauai, Hawaii.

beach-rooster-400px.jpg
In poster form, the image looks like this (above). Or, when printed on canvas, the dark border, containing Shakespeare quotes, wraps around the side of the stretcher bars, creating a finished, unframed effect.

Quote on the left side of the image (above):
"I have heard the cock, that's the trumpet to the morn."
Horatio tells Hamlet that the day has started with a "fearful summons."

Quote on the right side:
"What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, at one fell swoop?"
In the play Macbeth, Macduff grieves that Macbeth has had all his children, and his wife, their mother (their dam) killed.


Below: close-up details of the image.
beach-rooster-400px-detail2.jpg

beach-rooster-400px-detail1.jpg

beach-rooster-400px-detail3.jpg