As the gas mask featured prominently in the lives of Connie and her children it was essential that it featured in the exhibition. I wanted to create two separate haunting images of children wearing their masks. Although in reality they were never required to do so.
Firstly two line pencil drawing were created and scanned into Photoshop. Outlines were selected and stroked with black to create more definition. Greater depth was then created with the brush tool (soft light).
Survivor’s accounts of the Blitz had spoken of the redness of the sky, I felt this was essential as a colour for the backdrops. I spent some considerable time trying to create texture from a scanned collograph for the figures to stand on but with no success. In the end I simply applied a black gradient over the red. However, on closer inspection I saw that the gradient tool also created lots of banding which would be obvious when the images were printed large scale. Luckily I managed to find a very useful video which described how to use the noise/ Gaussian blur filters to alleviate this problem.
I spent some considerable time trying to find a finishing touch to “Armed Force”. Eventually the shadow of a German plane sufficed.
“Deadly Mementos” is based on the popular pursuit of collecting shrapnel by young boys during the war. One of my photos from Coventry Cathedral ruins was perfect as a backdrop Originally I wanted the bombs to be being collected in a pram but this took the emphasis off the figure of the boy too much.
