Inside with the AC and ATCs

original photo

Saturday was a pretty good day, considering how hot it got by afternoon. The artist trading card group deadline is Friday, so I decided to get my cards done in order to mail them Monday morning. The theme for July is "In the Style of..." and I chose Frida Kahlo to emulate. I particularly admire her self portrait with a monkey. Lacking a monkey for my endeavor, I held Lewis the cat and my husband was gracious enough to take the photo.

altered photo, scanned and cropped

  The pose that was chosen was the one where both Lewis and I had reasonable expressions, in keeping with the theme. Frida never smiled in any of her self portraits and Lewis looked less desperate than he usually does when he has to sit still for picture taking. I printed out two 5x7s--always good to have a backup in case of oopsies while painting. The background of the photo was obliterated with neutral gray gesso, then painted back in with the foliage design. Braided hair, unibrow, moustachio,and yellow shawl were added, as well as green eyes for the cat. Once all was painted, details added with pencils and markers, and allowed to dry, the altered photo was scanned and printed. For each trading card I added a flower in "her" hair as embellishment. The final result will be featured on Fiber Antics blog, this weekend or the first of next week.
  Sometimes I crack myself up. No wonder my kids worry about me.