disaster-averted

before shots. we will see what it looks like in the end.

So I mentioned that I had a disaster in the studio over the weekend and I did...It could have turned into a totally lost piece but luckily it just turned into a giant waste of time and money. Anyway I was hoping to work with Van Dyke which is an alternative photo process with the above piece.

I thought that the dark brown colors and tonal variations would really add something to the work and it was a different technique to take a risk with. The issue with this process is it is VERY finicky and unreliable and I no longer have a dark room and well it did not work. After a few hours, a trip to the city, and a chunk of money all I got was a brown shifting stain across the linen. But...though it was not what I wanted and technically did not work I was OK with it. Thought it did not make the piece better it also did not ruin it. So I trekked it home and washed it in my shower for 30 minutes as required. Prepared to just make it work.

When I got it out of the shower was when disaster hit- THE ENTIRE things was purple, panic set in, sadness set in, googling ensued, bleach was bought, bleach washes were done...and to make the story short it ended up almost as if nothing had happened. The embroidery was intact, the linen white, my heart palpitations stopped.

baldy.

The only thing damaged in the long run was the hair, the bleach had totally eaten away at the wool yarn that had been part of the hair texture. So over the last day or so I spent my time filling in the bald patches. Truth be told it looks better now then it did before and now I am just deciding how to treat the linen.

hair now.

Sometimes a risk in the studio is SO worth it, sometimes it is a disaster, and sometimes it is just a waste of time. But it is all part of the process and you always learn something along the way.

Lets see what happens today.