Art With Public Domain Images - Part 2 of 9
Dec 26th, 2007 by Greg Bulmash
READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 [here] | Part 3
In part 1 of this series, I introduced the project: create eight works of collage art to be incorporated into a larger art piece as a 5th anniversary gift for my wife... using public domain art from various online sources.
This second piece relates to the fact that after much harrassment, nagging, begging, pleading... this year I finally quit smoking and stuck to it. I'd quit before for a few days, a few weeks, once for 3 months, but I've been off the devil weed for 6.5 months so far.
But even 6+ months later, the "habit" still gives me twinges. I still want a cigarette and get the urge for one most days. It's just that the urge isn't accompanied by a desire to kill fluffy bunnies and use their carcasses to beat teddy bears to death if I don't get one... anymore. The first couple of days of quitting... kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!
This piece contains 4 distinct images. From left to right, the first and third images were extracted from old theatrical posters found at the Library of Congress. The second image from the left is the "butthead" from an anti-smoking campaign by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and was found by searching FirstGov.gov for "cigarettes", though using the term "butthead" is more efficient if you want this particular image.
Those three images were fairly simple jobs of cropping out the background, but the last image from the left took a bit more work. It is a photograph from the Library of Congress of a young woman lighting a cigarette. She's posed by a window and heavily backlit, creating an almost silhouette effect. In addition to cropping the woman out from the photo, I adjusted the levels to make the photo more silhouetted with small areas of lightness, then used an outer glow layer effect to give it an outline that could stand out against the background.
I originally planned to do a background using photos of cigarettes, but ended up deciding on the simple two-tone background you see here. With four images and text, I felt the image was busy enough without adding another image as a background.
If I keep up this pace, I'd be done by New Year's Day. But I've got three months to finish this, there are important projects in the wings, and Christmas is over. So look for installment 3 in January.
Still hoping to see if there's a connection between the Butthead campaign and Chris O'Donnell. No luck so far, but I swear that face on the cigarette looks just like his!
I didn't know you'd quit smoking - way to go, Greg!