Fake Drawing to Fake Print

I massaged one of my fake drawings with Deep Dream Generator and other digital programs, trying to get an interesting black and white image to etch with the laser cutter, to run through a printing press to make a fake print.  The idea is to create a 7 x 7 inch woodblock, to print on 8 x 8 inch paper, for the Southwest Print Fiesta print exchange of 2020.

FAKE PRINT

Has fake Mayan qualities, no?

DOWNLOADS-- of the REVERSE image ready to laser cut (to make a correct image when printed):

Made with Vectorizer:

• SVG
• DFX (in mm)
• PNG  (7 x 7 inches, 300 dpi)

Made with Waifu2x:

•  PNG  (7 x 7 inches, 300 dpi)

The above files for the laser cutter

have been reversed and inverted,

as this image

THE PROCESS

I first selected one of the fake drawings created in Runway ML, using the 3rd model that I trained with StyleGAN2:

Runway ML (StyleGAN2)

The original FAKE DRAWING,

I downloaded a pattern that was generated in Turtle Toy, and warped it in LViewPro (Image/Deformations/Warp...) so that it would not be so uniform. Then I skewed the pattern in Photoshop Elements (Image/Transform/Perspective) to give the pattern even more variation.

Turtle Toy

LView Pro

Photoshop Elements

I massaged this pattern from Turtle Toy,

to use as a style reference

in Deep Dream Generator

I then blended the two images above in Deep Dream Generator, using the pattern above as the style reference.

Deep Dream Generator

The fake drawing

with the pattern style applied

by Deep Dream Generator

Then I took the above image into Photoshop Elements and cleaned it up first (Enhance/Adjust Sharpness), creating a black and white image.

I used the paint bucket in Photoshop Elements to change the white to clear, and saved the image as a PNG.

PNG with transparent background

(it doesn't show up in the blog post,

but it is here)

In Photoshop Elements I layer the PNG with transparency onto the original image in Layers, and combined the two.

The original fake drawing

merged with the transparent PNG above

Then I turned it black and white again in Photoshop Elements (Filter/Adjustments/Threshold).  The image flowed nicely, however it still lacked weight at this point.

Almost there,

after altered by Threshold in Photoshop Elements

So I altered the above image once again in Deep Dream Generator, using the red image below as a style reference.

One of my best style references

for Deep Dream Generator,

derived from my drawing

The result from Deep Dream Generator

I again blended the last black and white image above with the result above, using Layers in Photoshop Elements.

The result from the last two images

blended in Photoshop Elements

In LView Pro I converted the above image into black and white (Image/Convert to Binary/Binary (Floyd Steinberg).

I erased a few pixels in the eye in Photoshop, and then blended the above image with the last black and white image ("almost there") above in Photoshop, to lighten up the dark areas.  This final image is at the top of this blog posting, and has a lighter feeling.