Photoshop Composite

     Welcome to my ART 146 class blog! What an exciting time to be alive...technology is ever improving and with it, the arts! I personally have little experience with composite images- I made one in high school and I guess it didn't suck, but I hope to see an improvement in my skills after this class!

     Anyway! Here are three composite artists I really liked:

1. Steven Hansen

     I just love food; the sight of it, the smell of it, and oh, the taste! What's great about these displays is that Hansen knows what he's doing; I'd say anyone with 20 years of chef experience would! But not only does he have the eye and hand for it, he's got a super crew of Bliss Holloway and Jack Hunter to help make the image in his head come to real life. I love when artist work together so seamlessly like that. Seeing how creatively he portrays food makes it fun to look at, like an adventure for the eyes as they jump from one food to another. I love the attention to detail in the individual layers of lasagna, and how the salad ingredients jump out in the air. The chaos of the individual dishes work so well to balance the whole piece. 

2. Jason Ulsrud

     What I like most about his work is that he's given traditional family portraits an nontraditional look. No family looks clean and well dressed everyday anyway, and everyday life can be exciting; why not capture those fun moments. With this sort of art, I used to feel like there was too much attention to detail, but I appreciate it now because every individual picture tells its own story in addition to adding to the final piece as a whole. I lost track of time looking at everything in the picture because it all just fits so well together and the story they create is so interesting! There is a really cool thing included on his page here that shows the process of his piece "The Wrestler" shown above on the right.  

3. Erik Johansson

     In his bio Johansson expresses the importance of realism in his work, "No one can tell you that it doesn’t look realistic if you actually captured it for real." All of his work is prepared by him and are his own images he's taken and manipulated to fit into the story the final image creates. I especially admire that aspect because these final images are so unrealistic and magical. 

(Images taken from respective artist's website linked in their names.)