John Rankin is a British portrait and fashion photographer who takes images of celebrities. He manipulates their appearance by distorting them into something abstract. He uses celebrities as a blank canvas to create an illusion. He uses black and white backgrounds to create a deceptive appearance by allowing the paint on the model to blend in with the background, creating an illusion of a real life abstract piece.
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This image by Rankin is one of my favourites as he created an illusion by redrawing a pair of eyes on the models eyelids, creating her into a human doll. I like how the image contains a lot of neutral colours. The eyes to stand out as they are drawn on which already gives off the illusion of them being enlarged and 'doll like'. They are also bright blue which is the only bright colour in the image, diverting the focus onto the abnormally large eyes. Another aspect of the image that I like is the fact that the top half of it is white and the bottom half is the models natural skin colour. Half of the hand is painted white whilst the other half is natural, which lines up with the box around the models head. This illusion gives off the effect that the model is very mannequin like. The use of makeup creates an optical illusion which is similar to my ideas.
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This photograph reflects my idea well as I want to use a black background and black paint to distort a models face. He created a deceptive appearance by using a black background, and a trick of light, making it look as though the model is missing part of her face, making her look abstract. In this image, the model is painted a pale colour and the background is black as well as the paint around her eyes and forehead, creating a mask which blends into the background. Once again, in this image the eyes are the only part of the image which have a bright colour. Even though they eyes are not the main focus of the image, you can clearly see bright blue which stands out among the dark painted mask and pale skin. The model looks like she has long lower eyelashes which is effective as this distorts the model. Rankin's purpose of this image was to turn the model into something that she is not.
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Alexander Khokhlov is a Russian photographer who collaborates with make-up artist Valeriya Kutsan, to create illusions using black and white paint as well as a black background. A mixture of face art, photography and post-production allowed the creation of two-dimensional posters. Khokhlov is able to completely transform a model into a 2D painting.
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I like this image by Alexander Khokhlov because it is very simplistic and the black and white contrast against each other. The white lightning bolt going down one side of the models face stands out against the background and rest of the face which is all black. The fact that they are kept neutral is effective as the artist wants the viewers attention to be diverted to the white lightning bolt on the face. The white against the black transforms the model into a 2D illusion. The purpose of Khokhlov's images is to create illusions and make people look as though they are 2D. The model blends into the background so the main focus is on the white lightning bolt and eye. The fact that the model only has one eye open which is the side with the white paint, further shows the viewer the idea that most of our attention should be on the left side of the face. The image is simplistic as not a lot is but an illusion is still created which makes the image look more interesting.
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The artist has still kept with the theme of creating 2D illusions, however in this image it has been emphasised as the white and black has been painted onto the face in a very specific way to make the models face look flat. Even the models nose has been made to look 2D as if she was a painting. There is almost a yin yang effect as half of the models face and hair is painted black, however she has a triangle of white painted underneath her eye,and vice versa. This can visually portray two sides to a person which can be the 'good' and the 'bad'. Due to her eyes being very blue/grey not all of our attention is diverted onto her eyes. The parts in the photo that stand out the most are the sections of paint on the opposite colours, which contrast and make the white stand out against the black.
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Next I used the dodge tool to highlight certain parts of the face which were a little too dark. This allowed me to give the photographs more dimension.
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After highlighting parts of the face, I used the burn tool to make the background look more smooth and remove the creases from the fabric that I used as a background.
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Finally, I used the sponge tool which allowed me to saturate parts of the image that I wanted to enhance the colours of. I used a soft brush and kept the vibrancy low to make sure that it didn't look too fake.
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This is the final outcome which enhanced the highlights and bright colours of the image which were lost in the original photograph due to the settings on the camera.
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