Omid Hast

Everyone has their own way of grieving.  When I heard of Benazir Bhutto's assassination in December 2007 I began to "posterize" one of her pictures, and while I was doing it I mourned her death. Every photo manipulation software has an image transforming option called "Posterize" that can change a photo into a poster in a fraction of a second, but I don't think anyone can grieve in that short of a time, so I do my own poster painting by hand, with the mouse.  I basically do the same thing that the software does; I take one shade of color that is most common in an area and apply it to that entire area without any variation in shades.  The process takes me a couple of hours, but while I'm doing it I shed my tears.  The best way I can describe the finished product is looking at a hand woven carpet and comparing it with a machine made one, the difference being that machine made ones, although much more perfect, do not seem to have soul.  I think all the imperfections in handicrafts are what gives them character.  I've also done one posterized painting of Delara that is not posted yet, but I will post it at a later time.

The original size for this image is 640w by 480h, but I discovered yesterday that the maximum size of Blog Image is 460w by 800h, so if I had posted the original one it would have been resized automatically, and therefore smudged., so I changed the size to 460w by 460h myself.  If anyone is interested to see the original size painting please send me an email and I'll send it to you as an attachment.