08.11.13 Dia De Obon

::Before and After::
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.

Let's take a look at the images.

Before

First thing I did on this image was smooth out the colors and add some accessories. I also modified the face shape on my model.

Modified face shape, and smoothed skin

My next step was dodging and burning.

With dodging and burning

My final step was to add some color variations.

Final Image

So that was everything.

Before and After

See the entire series at FANTiM.COM