Picture This 8 Swap

At Arty Oz group I participated in a swap run by Greta Young where we were all sent a picture and we had to use all or part of it to make ATC's.The picture above was the one sent to us and as you can see its a very powerful image.I'm not completely sure of it but it looks to be a poverty line of sorts.It took me by surprise at how sad I felt looking at the photo.I initially felt OMG what can I do with that.I printed it out all different sizes and sat looking at it for ages.I wasted a day doing gel medium transfers to discover the transfers made the people look dull and even more gloomy.I then looked at an A4 size print and started looking at the faces.It was interesting to me that some of the people where looking out at the photographer and these still had a vitality that seemed lost on the ones looking straight ahead.Finally I settled on setting just one person free from the cue...I would give her wings so she could fly away and below is what I came up with.

I used one of my Vilene and tissue backgrounds as the base,stamped all over with white gesso and added texture paste at the corners by pushing it thru a plastic stencil.Then I cut out the ladies dress coat and layered the image onto a word bg paper.I stamped her wings with white gesso and then outlined areas with a white perm marker.I applied some Golden acrylic paint washes of Hansa Yellow,Green Gold and Phthalo Green being careful to not cover the ladies face.Lastly I highlighted the texture paste areas with gold paint and added the words and gold heart brad.Below are my gorgeous received ATC's from the other players that arrived today in the mail.It was amazing to see everyone else's ideas made from the same image

Left ATC done by Vanessa Henry and right by Kaeren Sutherland

Left by Phillipa Barr and right by Elaine Hannam

Left by Greta Young and right by Ruth Spitzer

Left by Diane Whatford and right by Liz Aitken