In Memorium

I am currently taking a mixed media course at Emily Carr University, taught by Elizabeth Barnes. The project that was introduced last week in class (while I was absent) was mail art - that is, art in post card format. As I was away last week, I asked my teacher to email me the assignment, and I was pleased when I received the email detailing it. The theme of choice was "In Memorium", which I thought to be quite fitting, considering it's now been a year since the sudden passing away of my dear father. I decided to make this assignment a tribute to him, and also an exploration of how I see myself in him. Dad used to always tell me that I was like the "carbon copy" of him. Kids rarely can see themselves in their parents, but as I grew up, I realized it was true what he had always said, and even more clear when I saw old photos of him. I thus chose photos of my father in his youth. One image he's about 18 years of age, and the other, he's closer to my current age.

Media chosen includes image transfer, using a blender pen. This took more effort than it looks! First I had to get the photo images just right, and match the photo quality and of my photo to that of the old photos of my father using Photoshop. I had to adjust sizes and then print everything in black and white, run it over to the copy shop to make photocopies (necessary to activate the blender pen), then come home and cross my fingers that the transfer would work ok. I was pleased to see that on watercolour paper, the transfer looks almost like a charcoal sketch, but unlike charcoal, now we can mix it with wet media.

My wet media of choice here is brown ink mixed with water to get the orange/blue separation effect. I also added a little collage work for the text.