written in ink

© Sybille Sterk 

Do not copy or publish this in any way, shape or form without my written permission.

I am still playing with feathers. I wish I had wings or a tail like a mermaid. :-) This one's about fairy tales and how our lives are written in ink.

Feathers are I think from a blackbird (a cat may have run off with the rest of it). A couple of stones and a snail shell from my garden. A creative spark....

All other images/textures/brushes my own or bought. Edited with Photoshop.

All my images are available on Redbubble, Artflakes, Society6 and Bluecanvas as prints, cards, posters, skins for laptops, Blackberry, iPhones and other phones (for the skins go to Bluecanvas). You can now also get most of my images on cushion covers (go to Society6 for these).

On Society6

Written On My Skin - Photo Manipulation

This is in part inspired by Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and my musings on how we 'read' people. In the Oscar Wilde story people's perception of Dorian is wrong because the signs of his life as they are written on his face etc are not visible but only shown the hidden painting of Dorian. How do we 'read' people? How do you explain a sudden like or dislike of a person you know nothing about? There are many conscious decisions we make about people but probably far, far more subconscious decisions that allow us to get an 'idea' of a person just by looking at them, be it the shape of their mouth, the lines on their faces, the expression in their eyes or their body language, and all the many others we don't even know about.

I've chosen to 'cut' off the model's lovely head for two reasons. For one I wanted to 'cut off' the usual way for us to read people and instead show all the other ways and secondly I wanted people to be able to identify themselves with the image.

The barbed wire is a symbol of how people's perceptions of us and the decisions and choices they make on this perception limits us.

See the accompanying poem here.

Credits
Model: Rael C
Photographer: Marcus Ranum
Perchance to dream - 2 by mjranum-stock
Texture: Backblech 01 by sundel

MCN: C1LJ9-FKRSN-5YM76