TUESDAY TAKE-OUT #6: Vintage Ladies

Quick post with some lovely ladies, as I'm running behind today (tonight!) These beauties are from an undated book I picked up at an estate sale this week. The artwork throughout points to the 1920's, so I think it's safe to say you needn't worry about copyright infringement, especially if you're just using them for your own artwork.

You'll make me very happy if you leave a comment! (Look hard. The comment button is light blue on a lighter blue background and hard to see. I've tried any number of times to change it, but it simply will not be changed, and I don't know how to find it in the template's HTML coding. Waaah!)

Click on the pictures to make them come up full-size.

And now I'm off to bed. (It's after midnight, but I'll tell the computer it's still Tuesday!)

TUESDAY TAKE-OUT #6: Vintage Smiles

More vintage photos this week, not of typically beautiful people, but of some that made me smile just to see them. You can feel the joy of these free spirits, I think, and I often wonder what sort of people they grew into, and in the case of the children, I smile for the bright ebullience of their children, and the happiness they must have brought the adults in their lives.

 

 

 

These photos are free for your use, as you see fit. Please don't sell them. And you'd make me very happy if you left a comment, especially if you choose to save them to your computer!


As usual, clicking on the pictures will bring them up to full size.

TUESDAY TAKE-OUT #5: Feb, Pt 1

I thought for this week's Tuesday Take-out we'd do something a little different--vintage faces, instead of line art. Feel free to save these and use as you will. (Leave me a comment, if you'd like to make me smile really big!)

These images are quite large. Just click on them to see them full-size, and if you're not sure they're at their biggest, try pressing the F11 key. That will get rid of all the extraneous stuff at the top and bottom of your screen. To get it all back, press F11 again.





These are photos I've collected over time. Such wonderful faces, and interesting expressions. Who were they? What were they thinking?

FREE PHOTO FOR YOUR COLLAGE: WHA...!?

I found this photo of two lovely boys caught with surprised amaze on their faces.

What had just been said to them? Did the photographer tell them to "Watch the birdie"? What birdie? Where? We'll never know, and I will always wonder.

But here's a fact: If you'd like to use this photo in your collage art, click on it so it shows up full-size on your screen, and then right-click on it to save. (Mac user? I don't know what you do to capture images, but I trust you do!)

BOOK INTO BOX, PT 3

The cavity in the book is now hollowed out, as much as I want it to be. That presented me with a choice: decorate the inside of the book box, or the outside.

I still haven't quite figured out what I'm doing inside, and I had come up with some ideas for the outside, so the choice was logical, for me, anyway. (An even more logical choice might have been to do housework, but faced with the options of art and housework, there needs to be some pressing need for sudden tidiness to compel me to choose cleaning over creating!)

A number of possible styles had occurred to me, all of them radically different. Elegant. Country. Cute. Vintage. Very Vintage.

Ah. Vintage. They've been doing wonderful things in Somerset Studio Magazine, including the controversial Hats and Wings collage art. There are people who have "issues" with adding hats and wings to images and calling it art. I call it fun, and since it had been in my mind I decided that was the route I'd take decorating my new Book Box.

Yesterday, I painted the book. You might want to prime your book cover with gesso, but I liked the aged forest green of mine, so I dry brushed a coat of navy over it, letting the green show through a bit, and when that was dry, adding another sparse coat of paint, this time black. My plan was to wire brush through to the green when I was done with the collage.

Don't you love happy accidents? I discovered when I did the wire brushing that the brass bristles left traces of themselves behind, making the book look like it was brushed with gold.

This morning I got up eager to create the collage.

I pictured a 1920's or '30's black and white photo of a matronly woman, maybe sitting on the porch or looking out the window of an old, decrepit, even spooky, house. Dark, possibly a little forbidding.

Accordingly, I first went into the music room, where I had some old Etude magazines. I knew there'd be photos of opera singers. That would be good. Then I went down to my office and gathered up all the back issues I own of Communication Arts. Their annual Illustration and Advertising issues are wonderful, crammed with all kinds of pictures, in every genre imaginable. I'm constantly on the alert for them at garage sales and in thrift stores.

Well, the first thing that happened was I fell in love with a guy's face and expression. The matron went out the window, along with her house. The man grew wings made from palm fronds and flamingo beaks, and sprouted a tall pointy hat. Then he acquired a lovely wife. And indulged in conversation.

Did I say dark? Did I say forbidding? Art knows what it wants. Or else, I'm just a bit demented.

No protective coating yet, but finished design

I'm a big fan of rubber cement. It's so forgiving if you "glue outside the lines", but found it was not as sticky as I'd hoped, so next time I'll try a different glue. (Open to suggestions here.)

When you've laid out all your design elements and are sure you know where you're putting them, you can begin to glue them down. Things that are multi-layered, such as Finkydoodle's hat, which has five pieces, you may want to glue together and then add as a unit.

Here are two detail shots:


Can we talk?



What do you mean, is that what I'm wearing?

Next and final step: Finishing the inside of the Book Box.