USING CALLIGRAPHIC LINE AND PHOTOSHOP FILTERING TO REINVENT A PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

Artist are always pushing their work in new directions. Sometimes the artist will take bold leaps and make radical changes, but more often than not will introduce change in small and calculated steps. They will introduce some new twist or visual element into an old idea. Such is the case with the work I am presenting today.

This photo was taken the other day out by my fish pond. It remains unaltered, a straight photograph, except for some general clean up I did in Photoshop. Originally there were some distracting bits of debris floating in the water and these I removed.

The Japanese are particularly fond of fish ponds and often use koi and goldfish within their designs. I haver always appreciated Japanese art and I especially like Japanese calligraphy. I decided it might be interesting to experiment with overlaying some calligraphic lines on my photo. For this I used a pressure sensitive stylus to draw with in Photoshop. I tried to make lines that moved with the flow of the fish.

In this final image I was looking to escape the look of photography and to create a more painterly style. To achieve this I ran the image through a series of Photoshop filters.

So which of these images is most appealing to you? The straight unaltered photo, or one of the abstractions?