House, Felice (2006-08). War women: a motivating legacy enhanced. Master's Thesis. Thesis uri icon

abstract

  • Motivated by the need for strong female depictions in our culture, as well as the desire to research and pay tribute to the women workers of World War II, the author initiated the War Women project as the focus of this thesis. The objective of the project was to create a series of large-scale paintings of the women defense workers of World War II that could be used to pass down these womenA?s motivating legacy and reveal its contemporary context. To begin the project, nine historical photographs were chosen as source material for an original set of nine paintings. A problem arose when attempting to paint these images because the photographs chosen were low in resolution, leaving them vague and undefined. Though sufficient for creating the basic idea for a painting, the chosen photographs needed to be enhanced and re-created to become useful source material for the series of representational paintings. To enhance the images, props and models were found, photographed, and, in one instance, three-dimensionally modeled to replace their counterparts in the original photograph. Digital techniques like compositing, colorizing, and color correcting were essential tools for reinventing the source material. The resulting images were adequate source material for the series of nine paintings completed for the War Women project.

publication date

  • August 2006