Or, How to Help Your Family Time Travel
My daughter just celebrated her September birthday and I wanted to give her something very special. She has a fascination with all things Marie Antoinette. I have a fascination with all things ART and thought it would be a good opportunity to continue working on my digital mastery and eventual conquest of the world. Not too mention I thought ‘J’ might enjoy BEING Marie Antoinette! How often DOES a young, modern woman get to see herself in French court attire?
The first step was research and selection of a suitable Marie Antoinette image. Fortunately, there is a wealth of visual imagery out there, produced directly from life, during Ms. Antoinette’s lifetime. After much searching and perusing, I finally settled on this one:
The next step was finding the best image of my daughter. Despite the fact I have been a professional photographer for a couple of decades AND have photographed my daughter ad nauseam, I did not have a current photograph that would work for what I had in mind. However, all was not lost. Digging though my files I came across a photo someone had taken of her with a cellphone.
Cellphone images are really low resolution, so I had to do a little rezzing up voodoo before I could isolate her face. After isolating her face, I flipped it horizontally and performed all manner of magic on it so it would match the painting when I dropped it in.
Then came the moment for the face transplant……drum roll please…..
At this point, I continued to refine the piece, using several different techniques, such as cloning, sampling colors, blending, opacity etc. I originally thought I might remove the glasses, then realized how much Marie Antoinette would have probably loved the sense of ‘decorum’ they provide.
I decided the final piece should be printed on canvas, to mimic the real deal. More decisions; should I just use the straight up image, or should I drop it onto another layer? I decided that the French court was NOT about restraint in…..anything. The more layers, ruffles, colors and lace, the better. So, I used a portion of another image I had on file, of a pink rose overlain with another color layer and some sort of interesting choice of blend modes.
That’s it for this week’s brain salad surgery.
