This week I'm bringing you a photo from our series "Dia De Obon". It was inspired by Julia Kuzmenko McKim's Sugar Skull series. You can see hers on her site.
In the Japanese tradition of Obon families gather at cemetery and prepare the graves. During Obon season the dead can go home to visit their houses. So families prepare the grave sites and clean them up for their families return. During Obon they prepare an eggplant as a horse by putting sticks in it to represent four legs. The dead person uses this eggplant horse to ride to the families house. The family takes the eggplant home and then will later return it to the grave so that the dead can return to their resting place.
On the Mexican holiday "Dia De Los Muertos" families go to the grave yards and decorate tombstones with deceased family members' favorite foods and candies. This is done in order to encourage them to return where they can spend time with family and hear prayers that will be taken back to heaven with them.
There are a few similarities with these holidays that we wanted to explore, so we decided to merge them for this art piece.
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| Before |
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| Modified face shape, and smoothed skin |
My next step was dodging and burning.
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| With dodging and burning |
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| Final Image |
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| Before and After |
See the entire series at FANTiM.COM
