Drawings from photographs

Something I do alot as I collect my Old photographs is draw from them, I like doing quick pen drawings, not concentrating on perfect likeness, but trying to get across the personality that the photographs have. Trying to focus on creating characters rather than accuracy, which I think is more important for my work, I have a huge stack of these, some I like, some not so much, here are my favourites

todays finds at the Flea Market

Went to a fantastic Flea Market today, it was HUGE and although I had limited funds, I managed to bring back some really lovely stuff, as well as the following I also got a gorgeous 1930s black crepe dress, which I will photograph later on. There was a fantastic selection of photographs, here are the ones I bought, most of them are French, two are English.
'Little Ghost' I adore this spooky looking child



This girl looks quite ill for her first communion



Really nice family group, I like the baby chewing on his hand!



I thought the backdrop for this was stunning



This old woman is the perfect representation of how I see the Woman in Black, how stunning are her cape and bonnet



As well as the dress and these photos, I found a bag of 1950s paper dolls, with alot of hand painted cut out clothes to go with them, here is a small selection of the bag, which has loads and loads in! I use these kinds of things in my mixed media collages, so I mainly bought them as raw materials for my work, but there are some lovely things here.
These two are a from a group of about 6 or 7 of these quite large full dolls, when I have my own place I will have them all lined up on the wall.





here are a few of the hand done clothes for the paper dolls



And lastly my favourite one, this little petticoat

Welcome to Bly, part 2

Here is a revised version of the last image I posted, I am so much happier with this one, the colours have come together much better and the photographic faces work better, And takers for the job, they still need a governess

more on my Childrens Portrait series

I really like these little girls, I think they're quite adorable in a spooky kind of way, and I have managed to get a huge amount of uses from my one new Carte De Visite background

First piece with new photos

Here is my first piece of work using my new houseclearance frames, I'm really happy with this one, definataly for the portfolio

House Clearance Finds

I went to my local House Clearace shop today, they had some nice old pictures, nothing super special, but two lovely ones of a little girl called Marjory showing off two different outfits, the picture cards were sent to her Daddy in December 1914. Prehaps he was away in the war?





and I loved this one, the childrens costumes are really nice, and I love set up pictures like these



And finally some dashing Gents, I will use these pictures for my mixed media artwork, as I love the frames around them.

Work in progress

Here are some of my alternative images for my Turn of the Screw Illustrations, these ones are images of Miles, for the last of my 6 final prints, I did choose any of these for my final image of him, because they didn't quite get across the way the Governess sees him at the end of the story, but I am happy with them as images. I experimented on photoshop, making him up out of many different types of image, my photographs of my dolls, my drawings and some of my vintage picture collection.

I am happy with the way i've managed to replicate the hand tinting on Victorian photographs on photoshop for this project

Highlights from my Old Photograph collection

I am a collector of Antique and Vintage photographs, I have literally hundreds and hundreds of them, ranging from Victorian to 1950s I mainly focus my collection on Children, but I also have many others, anything that catches my eye really, I thought i'd post here my most prized pictures from my collection, the gems I am so happy to own.

The first picture is a photograph of my Grandfather and his brother dressed for a local fancy dress party, as a clown and a black Minstrel. I adore this picture, the original is very tiny and one of a series including their parents in costume and costumes they wore to other events. As well as my many anonymous pictures, I love having pictures from my family aswell.



This Pair of cabinet Cards are so lovely, I bought them off the internet so I have no idea who they are, or anything about them. To me they appear to be brothers who have been photographed in some epic crochet collers their mother or Grandmother probably lovingly made for them.



This one was bought online from America, I just love the outfit she is wearing and the setting, she seems kind of spooky and strange, I wonder what event she was dressed up for, possibly a bridesmaid.



Here is my Indian boy, A small picture in large frame, which I really like. This little boy was brought back for me from India by a friend who went on holiday there.



This is one of my all time favoutites from my collection, its a Tintype in an amazingly elaborate frame. On the back there is a little information about him, his name is Charles and he is a freed slave, I am so taken with his handsome, jolly face and his wonderful outfit, I found him in an antique shop near Cambridge.



This is my favourite of all the Holy Communion photographs I have, I love her face and her pose, its just a gorgeous photograph, I bought this online from Lisbon.



Another lovley Holy Communion Picture, with a Brother and Sister, I unfortunately can't remember which country this was from, possibly Belgium and it was bought online.



This pictures comes from a Photograph album I bought online from France, its very faded, but I adore it, I love the border and the patterned cloth they are sat on.



This another one from the French Album, a brother and sister, possibly the children of the owners of the album. I love this mainly for their strange clown-like costumes.



Here is another picture of the same girl in the previous photograph, dressed again in her clown style outfit.



This is my first Postmortem photograph, it is particularly sad as she is again the same girl, who appears in the previous two pictures, it is sad to know she didn't make it to adulthood.



My next postmortem photograph shows an unidentified little girl propped on a chair, notice her vacant eyes and dropping jaw, also the cloth behind her on the chair, placed there to soak up any bodily fluids coming out of the dead body. This picture was bought online from America.



This next postmortem picture is one of my best, and one of my most precious photos, its so beautiful, showing the whole coffin surrounded by flowers, again this was bought online from America.





Finally, my absolute favourite picture, which I bought quite recently online from England, although it could possibly be an American image, i'm not sure. This a particularly stunning example of postmortem photography, with the slightly open eyes and sad pose, I like the unusual composition of this picture aswell.

with the Sepia

with a touch more Sepia tone

Second Version of Graveyard scene

I did another version of the Graveyard, as I wasn't happy with some of the background on the original, this one, I think is an improvement

Portraits

For my last images, i'm going to focus on portraits of the children, in Carte De Visite style. The Governess has become completely taken over by the idea that these spirits want to inhabit the children in order to be together again, she can no longer see the children as Innocent creatures

Going to Church with the Governess

For my next Image, i'm going to show he Governess becoming suspicous of the children in the churyard, this is a strong scene in the book and shows her paranoia


In her mind the children are becoming more and more possesed by the ghosts