Portraits

Happy New Year everyone. Before Christmas I was asked about creating some kind of portrait using my method of working. I have never tried this before as I always work with landscape, therefore I had my doubts about how well it would work, but there was only one way to find out....

The top image shows a scan of the original piece. To create this I took a sheet of photographic paper straight from the box and laid my head down on it, in daylight, for about 5 minutes. When I took my head off the paper my silhouette was captured. There is not a lot of detail in the image but I expected that, what I didn't expect was that something that is rarely captured in an image was clearly visible. The pink shape near the mouth and nose is actually the mark my own breath made on the paper. The water vapour in my exhalations caused a chemical change in the paper changing the colour of it. A trace of the subject is now embedded in the image itself.

The bottom image is my attempt to create a more detailed portrait, something that might appeal to more commercial audiences. I layered a digital image of myself over the scan of the original piece. This then gives more detail and is recognisable as a certain person. Not too sure if it works or not.. or if the the two images together create a contradiction. If you have any thoughts, let me know!

(Photoshop is not my strong point so apologies for the mistakes there!)