This image began with a photo that I came across last summer,  a picture of my dad as a young man. The original photograph was a group shot, obviously of my dad with his friends, but all unknown to me. The picture of my dad was pretty small, and it was badly scratched as well. But because I really loved that photo of my father, I decided to see if I could do something with it and so I got to work on the computer.  I cropped the picture of my dad out of the original black and white photo and cleaned up the scratches. Then I used some digital cut-and-paste to make a new background out of the existing trees and sky, and cover up what remained of the other fellows, mostly their jacket sleeves. Then I used digital pastel, color overlays, and special effects to create the colors and textures in this image. This was a lot of work, but it was worth it to have this portrait of my father as a dashing young man with a boutonniere.

By Randa Dubnick.  All rights reserved.  Originally posted to Randiart.blogspot.com August 28, 2014

This is a “house portrait” that I painted in 2005 for my friends. This was an attempt to recreate Kerry’s childhood home, to paint a house not as it looks now but as it looked during the 1950s and 1960s. Because my friends live in Colorado and I live two time zones away (north of Boston), this was long-distance art as well as time travel.

My friends sent me an early black and white photo to work from, probably taken in the 1920s or 1930s. But in that photo, part of the house was obscured by trees and another part of it was covered with vines.  So my friends took new photos of the house and emailed them so I could understand the structures that weren’t visible in the black and white photo. The house had been changed quite a bit since the 1960s and had been painted white, so this project required collaboration with my friends to get the colors right! They even sent me a bit of crushed brick in the mail, which made me laugh and laugh. They told me about the front porch swing and described the kinds of flowers in the yard. I shared images by email and we talked on the phone, and I posted images on my blog as the work progressed.

So we built this house together with art and memories. Due to the long-distance collaboration, it took me three months to finish the painting. But it was so much fun! Besides, you know what they say: The road to the house of a friend is never long.

Painting by Randa Dubnick; originally posted on Flickr and on Randiart.blogspot.com August 15, 2005.  All rights reserved.

Several years ago, I was looking for pictures of my Dad in my Mom’s old album, where she kept photos he sent home from overseas during World War II.  I found a snapshot that I especially liked of my Dad in London, with St. Paul’s in the background.  But the photo needed a little help. So  I scanned the image into the computer.  The image was tilted, so I rotated and cropped it to straighten it out, and improve the composition.Then I adjusted the contrast for the sake of the patterns of dark and light.  Then I opened the image in Painter IX to do some clean-up.  I had to remove some black marks and scratches, so I used digital bleach, scratch remover, and even some cut and paste. It’s not really just about the photo, although I am glad that I could fix it up. It was nice to spend time on this today, and it made me smile to think of my Dad in London. He went to Picadilly Circus, and Saint Paul’s, just like I did.  He tried out the red phone booths and the pubs.  I wonder, did he ride the double-decker bus? I hope so, and I hope he liked it as much as I did!

Photo restoration by Randa Dubnick, from a snapshot taken by one of my father’s army buddies.  I originally posted this to Flickr and to Randiart.blogspot.com on August 28, 2006. All rights reserved.