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04/27/2011 05:11:45 PM · #1 |
Inspiration can come from anywhere - but sometimes it takes a long time to fully bring them to life the way you have visualized in your head due to either time, visualization, skills or all three.
I wanted to share the story of how an idea can evolve and improve over time. Things rarely turn out great the first time you tackle them and I think that this illustrates that perfectly. So if you find yourself frustrated and struggling, you are just in the evolution stage - it will come in time.
Back in 2008 when listening to the song She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5 the line "Look for the girl with the broken smile" struck me. I had a vision of a girl sitting in a chair head down and holding a broken mirror reflecting her smile.
May 2008
Still learning about lighting (and still learning- always learning what works and what does not) I used to two high power worklights and set them up on either side of my daughter in the dining room. Lighting was still poor that I used flash but covered it with tissue to diffuse it. I really had not thought much about what the model should wear only that it should have white (being the color of innocence).
Small B&W check tile is expensive so I decided to go the cheap route and purchase a cloth B&W check pattern. It proved to be a real pain as that the cloth tended to bunch with any tiny movement of the chair. I had the picture of the smile printed out large and discovered then how difficult it was to get the image reflected in the mirror.
I could only scratch one 'crack' line in the hand held mirror. If I had broken it there was no guarentee at all that it would break the way I WANTED it to (it had to be able to still show the reflected smile) After 30 minutes my daughter and I called it stops. I did some image processing to get a better dynamic tones but it just wasn't working. I needed to get better with my processing skills. You can see it did not complete some of the editing. Decided to shelf the idea.
November/December 2010
I decided to revisit the idea while participating in an ongoing Side Challenge Tournament for Overlays. Decided it was time to get BIG B&W checks and purchased 14 cheap tiles. Moved the shoot into the garage. Depending on the season and the time some nice defused light comes streaming when I have the garage door open. I took a picture of my daughter's smile and printed it HUGE this time. I needed my husband's help this time to hold up the board with the smile and angle it to that I could see the reflection in the mirror. NOT an easy chore at all. I still had to post process the full face smile in because I had printed the picture too huge that even with my husband standing on his toes got only a huge smile to reflect in the mirror (was freaky just seeing a mouth) .
I still had the one scratch 'crack' line in the mirror - I had limited success in trying to scratch more 'cracks' in the mirror with a nail. Rather than break the mirror I decided I would just overlay a cracked surface over the mirror in the Post Processing.
When laying out the tile I found I did not have quite enough - I had spray painted too many of them black. One broke and was short by two white tiles to fill out the pattern. Given that this was just a SC I knew that I could try to image process it, so I used plan white paper to fill in for the two missing white tiles.
I knew from the first shoot that I wanted my daughter's hair to fall and frame the face (that also took some doing with hair clips and rubber bands). I still wanted some features showing but not too much.
I had seen Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland back in May and liked the style of dress (blue dress) that also alluded to the Disney animated Alice dress. I wanted a subtle allusion to Alice (and maybe now the Cheshire cat come to think of it with the smile) so when I saw 'the' dress advertised in the Sunday ads, I bought it.
During PP I 'brightened' and whitened the wall and base board (cleaned up all the dirt smudges and all ...this is a garage). I was not happy with how 'sterile' and clean it looked. Something was missing - something that would add to the sadness mood. Again since this was a side challenge I went looking for overlays on the internet and found one that helped add to the mood.
April 2011 Sadness Challenge
When I saw the new challenge announcement I knew I had to revisit the idea. I had to do it WITHOUT all the prior Side Challenge tricks I used back in Nov/Dec. I had learned from my mistakes and flaws . I bought 7 more tiles so that I could complete the pattern. I took another picture of my daughter smiling in the challenge time frame. Using Aimeethetoo's trick for her Ribbon winning Grim Fairy Tales entry - I printed it out to size of the mirror.
The cracked mirror was a bit of a problem. I didn't want to go through several mirrors to get the right look. So looking at the clear plastic covers for school reports I tried an idea of using a black sharpie to create a cracked mirror look. It looked O.K. but lacked some dimension. So I use a silver sharpie and drew next to the black lines to give and illusion of 'depth'. Much better! Cut it out and pasted it over the picture in the mirror.
The wall - hmmm, what to do about the wall. Well, mixing purple and green washable paint together to come up with a black/green I proceeded to smear and splatter the set. And THANK THE MAKER it washed off the wall after several days of sitting there.:-)
I switched out the doll with another one. I liked that this one had a white dress and blonde hair. The one prior was a red dress and red hair - too dark when converted to B&W. I used the glue gun to create a single tear running down the dolls face but unfortunately you can't see it because the color was too transparent and it virtually disappears when it got resized down to the challenge size limits.
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04/27/2011 08:39:35 PM · #2 |
And this,  CNovack is how art is made.
An artist has a thought, develops it, works with it, and eventually makes it her own unique creation.
This is an outstanding explanation of one of the paths to creativeness.
Thank you for outlining it here. |
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04/27/2011 09:43:24 PM · #3 |
Absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much for the detail!
Now: send a note to Langdon explaining that you'd like to submit this as a "How'd They Do That" tutorial and get yourself $5 off your next membership renewal. :) |
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04/29/2011 09:14:36 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by levyj413:
Absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much for the detail!
Now: send a note to Langdon explaining that you'd like to submit this as a "How'd They Do That" tutorial and get yourself $5 off your next membership renewal. :) |
Hey, wow. I didn't know we actually get 'paid' for tutorials.
Heh, heh. This bargain hunter is back to the keyboard!
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