Serenade (Posterized)

Serenade (Posterized Photo)

This image began with a family photo, one of my favorites, of my father serenading his sisters (four out of five of them). The scene is a rooftop in New York, probably Brooklyn.  I don't know who took the original picture, but it might be my dad's other sister, or maybe his brother.  And that's the family dog, Queenie.  I already had a digital version of this photo, so today I used iPhoto to clean up some of the scratches and marks, as well as to straighten and crop.  I saved a copy at that point, to have a clean photo for the family.  Then I opened the image in Painter and used some color overlays and digital pastel to add some color.  When I had what I wanted, I added posterizing effect, working with selection tools to get the effect where I wanted it. I did all this today because my dad was born on August 28th, and I am still celebrating that he was my dad. While I worked on this, I thought about my dad, how he could pick up any instrument and start playing by ear, how he could whistle, and how it would be so like him to drop a knee and serenade his sisters, just for fun.