Self Portrait Challenge - Bathrooms!

As I was reading Michelle Caplan's fabulous blog, I realized that I also have a self-portrait image...one I could use for this month's Self-Portrait Challenge theme of bathrooms!

Girls do funny things on "girl's weekend" trips to NYC, and I guess I was no exception! This was taken at Bar 89 in Soho, which is probably something all New Yorkers know about, but being from Massachusetts, well...

This Unisex bathroom had clear glass doors, then when you close them, they turn opaque. So after shopping for knockoffs all day, then enjoying several drinks at Bar 89, we discovered this bathroom and took lots of silly pictures. This is me trying to figure out if I could see outside the door.

Yes, I can hear all the New Yorker's laughing now.

Fossil collage

This digital collage is composed of layers of rust images along with fossil images and text. I like the textures and blend of colors. Over the weekend I'm going to try printing this on some sort of highly textured background and see how it looks.

"Another Saturday" Mixed Media Collage

Here is the mixed media collage that uses the same technique for the writing on the face as the digital collage I posted yesterday. The background is various color washes on thick watercolor paper, covered with japanese paper, then a transparency layer with the face.

Botanical Collage

Another digital collage. Actually I made a real collage similar to this one over the weekend and will post it soon. Call me lazy, but it's in the studio and I'm too tired to go get it.

Part of the process was the same for the digital collage here, and the traditional one, and that is the layers with the face and text. In Photoshop there is a background white layer, a layer over that with text, a layer over that with a light color that I partially erased, and then the top layer of the face. For the face I used the levels adjustment to make it really contrast, then used a halftone filter to make it contrast more. All the layers except for the face were set on normal, but the face layer was set on overlay.

Further changes were made after that, but that's how I got the face and text looking the way it is.

I'll try to get off my bum tomorrow night and post the other one. After working all day at my "real" job, then carting the kids around, it's surprising to even bang this little collage out, but it seems to be an obsession!