Warhol Scanning

Creating Pop Art with your Scanner

by PC Smart

sandbox serendipity (my art blog)


I am a huge fan of Warhol's stark imagery and wanted to create a similar look without hand painting each image. This is not really an earthshaking technique but it is a fun way to play with images quickly and easily. My avatar image is an example of this kind of scanning. I scanned in a photo of me taken on Halloween - I was a "desperate housewife". I also published a how to in a recent issue of Make It Mine Magazine (take a cue from Warhol) These images work well with altered art and those high contrast color or b/w images that are not really visually interesting on their own but have good "bones". I love using vintage images for this technique but it works equally well with close up face shots that may not be portrait quality (like my avatar). Another use for this type of scanning is sports/action photos. You will get a great sense of drama without worrying about the details/distractions of the shot.
Please note, this is not a grayscale or b/w photo mode- it is the mode labeled b/w, text document or something similar. It scans totally b/w, no shades of gray. On most scanners you will be able to manually adjust the amount of black/white (threshhold) to get the level of detail you want. Scan at a high resolution of 300 for a color image or 600 for a b/w. Play around with the brightness/contrast of the image if your scanner has that option. (you may need to go into manual advanced options to see all these settings).
(For those with photoshop/elements, this produces a result similar to the stamp or photocopy filter. )

Here is a typical example of Warhol scanning.....



My daughter hated this photo - she hated her hair, her shirt, her lipstick, etc. (but then she is a teen so that is to be expected). She liked the pose though and wanted to funk it up and use it for a project (an all about me type of thing). So we scanned it in as a b/w image and got the second photo....she liked that (go figure!). Then we put it into elements and added a gradient background (you can do the same thing by printing the image onto a transparency and layering it over a patterned paper).
I love using this b/w scanning for architectural images, the b/w scanning reduces the image to clean lines that are graphically appealing. As I mentioned before, bold images are best. You need a lot of contrast to get a good b/w scan. Black/White photos work well as do facial close ups. Depending on your scanner, you may have varying levels of threshold control to capture details.

For the "Make It Mine" article, I used a b/w scan of a carousel to create cool coasters and a pendant. I printed the images on transparency and layered colored acetate behind them. I sandwiched these sheets between plexiglass and metal taped around the edges. The pendant was a smaller transparency with metallic cardstock behind it, placed into a pendant frame. The metallic cardstock gave the image an engraved look - really cool. Play around with this setting on some of those 'not so great' shots and see what you come up with.....