Duffy's Dad

Duffy's Dad

Duffy's Dad was finished in January.  This was taken from a black and white photograph from 1944.  Whenever I start a piece with subject matter that I am unfamiliar with, I do a lot of research for similar images.  In this case I looked for aircraft from the era, with the help of my husband who is a WWII army buff.  From the photograph which wasn't very clear he gave me some options for what he thought the plane was.  From there I did internet searchs to get a better picture of the plane.  Then I went on to the uniform and tried to get better idea of the color, details, the cap, etc. 

Inspiration photo

This is the photograph I started with, just the center portion.  I increased the size by about 4 times and then added the wingspan of the plane to fill out the composition.  You can see my pencil drawing on the left and right of the photo.

Strips of fabric

First the background gets laid down.  Fall colors were used for the background.  You can see the sky strips laid down at the top of the composition.



The most difficult area

When you get to the details of the face you don't want to put something there that you aren't sure of.  So, I tend to be more vague in order to let the viewer suggest the details as they see them.  The face was done with inks and then overlaid with sheer fabric. 



Fused but without detail stitching

This is how it looked before adding the stitching.  rough and flat, it doesn't have a lot of deptha at this pont.  The finished piece is the one at the beginning of this post.