Four Works: Digital Art, Master Photographers & Vintage Delights | First Night Design

Originally posted on First Night Design.

The other day I was studying an old photograph that I had taken while on holiday in Crete of the Venetian Harbour in Chania. I was wondering what I could do with it. In fact, I’d been looking at it and wondering for some years because it doesn’t stand alone as a photograph. It wasn’t until I was going through my cache of background textures for another piece that inspiration struck. I chanced upon a photograph of moss-covered rock which, combined with the harbour, formed the basis of an image I could work on. A number of tweaks here and several blending changes there (in Photoshop, as usual) enabled me to create this kind of dirty Canaletto-crossed-with-J M W Turner, if you will!

The Gloria Swanson Tattoo was inspired by Edward Steichen‘s well-known headshot of the Hollywood actress covered in lace and held by the Museum of Modern Art. I had remembered it as an image by Man Ray so it is just as well that I checked. Both photographers were renowned for their Hollywood and fashion photography in the 1920s and 1930s. The Swanson photo (Hello-Tuesday) and the vintage wallpaper (MGB-Stock) image I used to create the lace effect…

via Four Works: Digital Art, Master Photographers & Vintage Delights | First Night Design.