Sep 3 2008

recent portfolio additions

Victor. Digital illustration.
© 2008, Cynthia M. Henchell. All rights reserved.

I’ve had these images in my head for years and just now have gotten the time to develop them enough to be able to add them to my portfolio of digital illustration. Some are more “finished” than others and a couple still qualify as “sketches” I keep revising them.

What is the madness behind the unusual theme? I wanted to capture some of the feeling of San Francisco and the community of Locke in the Sacramento River delta from a time when Chinese immigrants were still trying to adapt to their new surroundings. Relationships with the outside world were complicated and at the same time, this society was itself torn between the new world and the old world. There are more to come but I decided to let these first few out.

In general, I’m not in love with the Polaroid transfer look since it’s such a clich´, but I tried it with Victor and kept it for the cyanotone contrast to the montaged hand-tinted sepia-tones.

The (glic´e) printed sizes are small (about 5″ to 7″ wide) and meant to be a series of miniatures, not too different than Smith portraits or snapshots from the period. I have them in oversized mattes. View others in the series.