Backyard at Katzes October 1943

In Katzes' Backyard Oct 43, a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

I was looking for pictures of my mom today, and they are hard to find because she hated to have her picture taken. But I finally found a nice snapshot among photos that had been my Dad's (given to me after he died). Well, of course! She was willing to have pictures taken of her so she could send them to him when he was overseas during World War II! Well, I was glad to find this picture of her, taken in the backyard of the house that she grew up in (as did I). The label on the back of the picture says "Backyard at Katzes" and "Late October 43." I recognized the flowers: pink cosmos, which were still growing there when I was a kid. Apparently they were still blooming in October. Anyway, I was happy to find this snapshot. I scanned it into the computer and kept a copy of the original. (I will post it tomorrow.) Then I opened the image in Painter and used digital pastel, color overlays, and posterizing. I worked hard to get the effect I wanted: October light, the haze of memory, and the magic of dreams. It was nice to spend time working on this, spending time thinking about my mom, because her birthday was November 2nd.