Coffee Time (Snapshot Memory)

A few years ago, my aunt sent me a package of photos of my mom. My aunt took them out of her own album and mailed them to me because she thought I would like them, and I sure do! Most of the photos were new to me, images of my mother before she got married. Yesterday I was looking through the packet and found a great picture of her. The handwritten inscription on the back said: "Coffee Time at the Katz Domicile -- R". (My mother's name was Ruth and that sounds like her sense of humor.) I have seen other photos of my mother and my aunt sitting at the kitchen table with a changing cast of characters: soldiers, assorted boyfriends, and even husbands to be, so I think this was during WWII, though the photo is undated. My mom and my aunt used to go to USO dances and met soldiers stationed in Pueblo during the war. Sometimes a soldier got an invitation to come to the house. Apparently the "Katz Domicile" was the place to be! I don't know who took the picture -- maybe my aunt or one of the guests -- but the unknown photographer capture a great picture of my mom's face. So when I saw the snapshot yesterday, I decided to do something with it for Mother's Day.  The original snapshot was black and white, and quite small (2 x 3 inches). I loved the photo but there were a couple of things I wanted to fix. The original version also had captured the arm and hip of another person, seen from the back, on the right side of the picture.  And of course, my mother was smoking, and I wanted to get rid of that cigarette -- something I was never able to do in real life.  So I scanned the image into my computer, did some basic cleanup and cropping with the Mac photo program, and then opened the image in Painter.  I used cut-and-paste to cover up the second unknown figure in the photo. And I used digital pastel to draw over that cigarette. I adjusted the focus just a bit, too. I saved that edited version of the snapshot, made a copy, and then added color with digital pastel and color overlay.  I know my mom liked purples and pinks and reds, so I used those colors. Then I posterized it hard, which intensifies colors and adds texture. The result looks modern, a bit edgy, and I think my mom would have liked that.