Ghostly Glow

So I've been working on some smaller pieces lately, though, I've also been busy getting my Strange Angels series moving along as well.  I have a show of those coming up in February.  I find however that I need to work on smaller pieces in between the large one's to reduce the stress that I often experience after I've completed a piece that has taken a bit more time.  I find I need to work on something that is a bit more immediated...then I can head back and conquer the large scale stuff again.

So I started playing with old photos, and modifying them with paint and pen.  There is absolutely NO collage....not that there is anything wrong with that...I just wanted to be clear on the process.  It all starts with a vintage photo and I get at it with paint, white ink, and black India ink.  (I use ink so I can use a pen tip to get really detailed lines.)

Okay here's how a couple were done.  In this case I found a postcard of Frida.  I decided to modify it.  by the way, I'm finding that old photos and postcards tend to work better....though they cost more.  They work better because if you start doing washes on cheaper postcards the colors might totally fade away.  I did this on what was essentially a inkjet postcard and everything faded on the first wash except for the color red.   

I used a very high quality postcard of the image below.

In this case I actually cut the image down to make more than one piece.  I had a third (far right folks) but that piece didn't turn out.

And this is what became of those photos:

Here's one from a different photo where I left some of the frame:

And this next one was interesting because this photo started as a large group sitting.  There were a total of 6 people in the photo originally.  Now you can see some of there ghostly images lurking behind. 

For instance, If you look to the left of the image you can see the remnants of one of the picnickers:

And then if you look closely...look between the boy and the girl and you can see that once upon a time a girl sat between them.  

So that's what I've been doing...thought you might be interested in my ghostly photos.

p.s.

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