ART and TRIVIA For Saint Paddy's Day

Today is St.Patrick's Day and today according to the MARCH show... March 17, 1905: Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt are married. "What say we put a little touch of Irish whiskey in your tea, Ellie, eh?" FOUR YEARS AGO today I was finishing up something. Something "not GREEN at all." In fact, something "VERY RED." Curious? It was home stretch for a piece I knick-named "RED EMILY." I never photographed or scanned this piece in it's entirety when it was finished. What you're looking at is the "most finished" copy of the image I have. That is, outside of it's frame. I do have some pictures of those. One includes where it now hangs on a wall in a house somewhere in New York. A wonderful librarian bought it! Just something curious I found in my archives. ENJOY!

The process...

This image is featured on my website for the month of March. So, here's... THE STORY behind the picture of POE I wanted to do "another Poe" My original "Poe" --the one titled "Edgar Allan Crow," that combined the author's portrait and a raven-- was well received. But I always wanted to take another shot at the troubled and mysterious Edgar Allan Poe. First, I had worked up a rough sketch of his portrait. I scanned that in and combined it in Photoshop with a photo of myself leaning against a church wall in Ireland. (I had my file of photos from an Ireland trip opened as I had just used one of a river for my Virginia Woolf portrait). The photo was manipulated somewhat and re-proportioned to fit in the archway of the church to make it look more like a door. When my rough was finished, I printed it out and began drawing "on and into" it. I left a lot in the face to be drawn from scratch but allowed the transparancies created from the quick masking and layer effects used in Photoshop for this under drawing to stay "as is." When it came to open space of the door, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. At one point I thought a woman's face filling the opening might work and began lightly sketching it in. But as I hadn't really planned it out, I started second guessing myself. And finally, just "scribbled it out." That scribbling became the smoke-like effect that now fills that void. It originally was very black on that side of Poe's face and body. "Coming out of the shadows" did have an appropriate look to it, however, in "fixing this mistake," I do like how the light grey-blue helps define that side of the portrait and centers the focal point to Poe's face. A "happy accident" I guess you might call it. But I see as just a part of the process -- sometimes you don't know where something might take you.