Journal; "Endless hours" edition

It (or they) is finished! Finally. This was a very time-consuming project. I took this mask photo assignment and ran with it. There were scheduling issues, technical difficulties, weather related problems, etc. But, after 4 days of "let's try this again tomorrow" I finally got what I needed and very nearly abandoned it all.

I got the photos I need for the assignment and worked for a day in Photoshop getting it all together in a way that was working for me. I think I am still going to call the finished piece "Icarus" because it still feels like it belongs to me, and it adds another level of contemplation to the piece.

 I am pleased with the final piece, but still wanted to experiment with the idea of combining photographic with illustrated elements for a different kind of image. My original idea was to incorporate cartoon-like drawn elements into the above image, but after some trials I abandoned the idea. What ended up happening was that I did a digital painting and then added the mask in as the face. The painting was inspired by a child sitting on the grass in a park near where I was shooting the portrait for the above image. I took out my sketchbook while waiting for the model to arrive and did some figure drawings of the child that I later used. This image is more literal when it comes to the Icarus myth. The child sitting on the ground with his wings falling apart around him.  Also the "i" on his shirt with the dot as a simple sun.

There are a lot of things about this image that I like, but I liked it more without the photo of the mask incorporated. Because of the time invested in getting it to this stage, I will likely work with it more, adding texture to the background, and completing the face of the child with the mask off. I may also change the feathers to gray-scale and add some melting wax dripping off into puddles in a luminescent golden-yellow... or rainbow :)