Here we are at May 12th again. Another Invisible Illness Day come to bring awareness to all the illnesses and diseases which are impolite enough to leave their sufferers still appearing to be well. Of course, anyone more than casually acquainted with someone who has fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, complex regional pain disorder, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, Lyme, lupus and many, many more illnesses can attest to how debilitating they can be. The facade of health they leave intact feels like salt in the wound; a confusion for those untouched by their cruel hand, a silent undermining force with us at every doctor’s appointment, a declaration that we are lying or greatly exaggerating our illness.
What else can I say about ME? About all the other forgotten, ignored diseases swept under the rug of modern medicine? Illnesses which embarrass our doctors with their constant reminder that we remain unhealed. Sicknesses with confusing, confounding symptoms which can morph and change like the whim of a butterfly’s flight. Maddening maladies which suck away our vitality, our joys, our passions, our lives as completely as any vampire.
I’ve written about ME extensively as it’s been an enormous part of my life for the last eight years. How I have not had a single day since late May of 2008 that was free of pain or its constant, overwhelming exhaustion. How it has progressively gotten worse each year. How the government would like to pretend we invisibly ill don’t exist. How grotesquely underfunded our research is, giving us the same amount of money for research as hayfever gets and less than 1/4 of what male pattern baldness receives. You have heard me spout the facts and statistics. You’ve heard me talk about my personal story and fight with ME. What else can I say?
I can say this: I am not beaten. I have not given up.
I am determined to get better. I am committing myself to be well, even if I have it about through sheer mental will. I will not give in to ME’s gloomy, hopeless future forecast of progressively worsening every year. I am not accepting a future of the living death that is ME.
I don’t know exactly how I will get better, but I am going to. As a sign of my determination, I changed my blog’s tagline for the first time since I started this blog years ago. “Art, photography, life and why I always feel like shit,” felt perfectly appropriate at the time. “Art, photography, life and how those are really all the same thing,” is much more appropriate now. My identity is not Sarah-who-has-ME. I am just Sarah.
As I wrote about in my last entry, my life has been pleasantly consumed recently by my spirituality. I have strongly felt how focusing on fighting ME has been feeding it. So now, I will ignore it as much as possible. I do not mean that I will forget my body’s current limits, or not honor them. Listening to my body and what it’s able to do is vital for my current and future wellbeing. But I’ve realized that I can live within the confines of my case of ME while still not letting it reign in every area of my life, and that feel incredibly freeing. This is the path I will pursue.
This also does not mean that I will not advocate for ME sufferers. I still feel very strongly that the only way we will bring about change is by demanding it. And we can only demand it if we know that it exists in the first place. But I can also advocate without allowing ME to rule every part of my soul.
As May 12th approached, I wanted to create a new image for my Enchanted Sleep series, which is all about living with ME. I asked Katie Johnson, frequent model and collaborator as well as dear friend, if she would help me bring some concepts to life and she gladly agreed to help. Through a variety of factors, I wasn’t able to shoot these images until very recently, which meant I had a very short window to edit one up and release it for Invisible Illness Day, but I got it done! Ideally, I would be releasing the whole short series we shot, but I am content with having just one to show you and help illustrate life with ME. With that, please let me present my latest image to you, Living With The Tombstones.
I probably don’t have to explain the symbolism behind shooting this image in a graveyard. ME (and many other invisible illnesses) truly can be a living, nightmarish death. Even if you’re not one of the unfortunate souls cursed with severe ME, where any touch, light or sound cannot be tolerated, you die every day to the dreams and hopes you had when you were healthy. You might discover new passions to pursue within ME’s confines, but do you ever truly forget what’s been taken from you? If you do, I am not there yet.
I took the name “invisible illness” and interpreted it quite literally, editing out any part of Katie’s body which showed outside her long, princess-like dress. And the mirrored mask felt like the perfect touch. When people look at us, they rarely see us; they see their projections of who we are. Often what they see says far more about them than us. Some will look at me and, because I can occasionally manage to put on clothes, have Geoff drive and go with him to the grocery store, refuse to believe there could be anything physically wrong with me. They don’t see the toll that those short, simple trips take on me. They don’t know that grocery shopping is my ENTIRE plan for that day, probably several days. How the lights and noise and bustle inside the stores give me migraines, panic attacks and leave me in bed for the rest of the weekend. They don’t see the weight of my illness on Geoff and my family. How if I see friends, they always have to come to me. I so often feel like a dead-weight wife, daughter and friend. The times I’m overwhelmed by the ME and can’t decide between crying and being too tired to cry. How many pills I take every day to try and make it to the next day and not be consumed by the constant pain I’m in. They just see a fairly normal-looking girl.
I can’t blame other people for not knowing that I’m sick. I don’t display the characteristic signals of someone who is unwell, so of course people assume I’m healthy. But we need to get to a place where I could tell a stranger that I have ME and they might know what I’m talking about. That if someone else said they have MS or Crohn’s or fibro, that stranger would have heard of those illnesses. That the stranger would have at least a basic idea of our struggle and the dire need for change, for research, for treatments, cures and basic respect.
We can get there. We will. One May 12th at a time.
Join in the #MillionsMissing protests in Washington DC and other locations through the world on May 25. You can participate even if you’re too unwell to join in person or if there isn’t a protest near you!
Start a discussion, link to articles, blogs, videos and/or artwork that discusses ME or other invisible illnesses that will help spread awareness. Add a #may12th hashtag to your posts!
Watch and share the video below which I made last year:
I’d like to thank everyone in my life, online and off, who has supported me during these trying past eight years. Especially Geoff, who I’d only been dating for a month when I became ill. Lesser men would have run from what he had to face, but he’s stuck with me, no matter how bad things get. And I’d also like to thank everyone for the extremely warm and receptive response you all had to my previous blog post. Your kind words and love and support are greatly appreciated, now and always! ❤
First, let me quickly update those of you who are regular readers. You may remember my Preparing For Battle post where I talked about… well, preparing for the big battle I was about to face. I was sick with stress and worry about it; it was honestly one of THE hardest things I have ever had to do.
But guess what? I WON!!! I’m afraid I still can’t give many details about the nature of the fight, but this is a huge, wonderful victory for me and will help make my life a little bit easier. So thank you VERY much to each and every one of you who said a prayer for me, lit a candle, sent Reiki or good thoughts… they all melded together and produced one hell of a win for me!
Now, with that’s said, let me tell you about my calendars!
Sarah Allegra 2016 Calendar
These guys are always a favorite; they’re probably my single best-selling item. And with good reason! Red Bubble packs a ton of quality into these babies with thick paper, almost like a heavy cardstock or watercolor paper. The pages have a subtle sheen without being shiny. The daily squares are big enough to make notes in. I still have calendars (both my own and from other artists) from years ago which hold up beautifully, even after years of flipping through them to see the lovely pictures!
Sarah Allegra 2016 Calendar
This also brings something else up: getting this calendar is like buying 12 small prints of my work! Each year’s images are different, making each year a unique and collectible item. And if you want to keep the calendar after the year is over, like I do, to enjoy the images whenever you want to pull it out? That’s fine! Red Bubble does a great job at printing the images and making them look the way I want them too; this is a solid buy! You’ll get images which span across my series, from my DreamWorld, Enchanted Sleep, Eternal Storms to self portraits, which feature Katie Johnson, Dedeker Winston, Travis Weinand, Noemi Regalado as well as the beloved author of The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle!
Also, while I was uploading a diptych of Travis for one month of the calendar, I noticed that it made a really awesome pattern for Red Bubble’s leggings. So get your Travis-printed leggings now! 😀
Travis Leggings
All of us independent artists and craftmakers REALLY appreciate your purchases, whether it’s for Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, regular holiday shopping, something for yourself, or any other reason you might have! Please keep shopping small in mind during this holiday season!
And don’t forget to check out my friend Jessi’s Etsy shop, The Hopeful Spoon, full of beautiful, hand-made earrings (and other jewelry pieces coming soon!) full of lovely semi-precious stones at very reasonable prices.
This image is a little bit “out of order,” so to speak. The Apprentice is, obviously, an apprentice, but to someone you haven’t met yet, although you will. In an ideal world, I would have shown you the Apprentice’s mistress first so it made more sense why she is out collecting herbs and plants and other ingredients, but you’ll have to just trust me on this for now 🙂 Hopefully I’ll be able to show you her mistress soon, but that’s going to be a pretty complicated shoot.
This image is extra special because it features a new model for me, Noemi Regalado. Noemi is not someone who actively pursues modeling like most of the other people I work with. She happened across my work and sent me an email asking if she could be a part of it. Of course I said yes! It took us a little while to find a time to shoot (which was all my fault; I think she first wrote me right around the time of my first sinus surgery and we know how that turned out. And it seems nothing has calmed down since then!) but eventually we got a time set that worked for us both.
In a way, I’m a little glad that we had a few months to email back and forth and get to know each other a little more before the shoot although I’m sure the wait was maddening for Noemi! (She will probably deny this because she’s very laid-back and easy going, but still. Waiting sucks.) In the course of our email exchange I learned that she has had her own health battles despite only being about the same age as I am. She is a cancer survivor, currently completely in remission, and I suspect that she will stay that way. She is a gentle soul but I know she fought that cancer out of her body. She also participates in mud runs, something I probably would never have had the endurance for even before ME, and since her apartment only allows very small dogs, she volunteers regularly at a German Shepherd rescue group. Every couple weeks she goes down, takes a dog out for a nice walk, socialization and a whole lot of love. Then she repeats the process several times. If that’s not one of the best examples of making lemonade from lemons that you’ve heard, I don’t know what to tell you 🙂 Shelter dogs have SO MUCH up against them, even the smallest gesture of love and attention can go a long, long way toward helping that dog find his or her forever home. And so far she has been directly responsible for at least one Shepherd finding a home with a friend of hers! I’m sure there will be more.
As you can see, Noemi is a very cool chick! I wanted to come up with some concepts for her which would fit with her personality and her willingness to get uncomfortable and messy for a photo. We ended up shooting two concepts; this first one that you’ll see today, as I said, is a DreamWorld image, and the second one, which I have not yet edited, will show off her willingness to do what it takes to get the shot. And I have to say, she was a great model! She took direction very well and had a better knack for it than some “actual” models I’ve come across 😉
So, let me tell you a little about making Noemi’s mask/headdress for this shot! It all started with this lovely purple mask which I found at Rite Aid, of all places, on one of my many, many trips there to pick up prescriptions. The color really caught my eye, I thought it would compliment Noemi well and I also noticed that it was less expensive than the completely blank, white masks at the craft store! And no built-in swirls with the blank white masks either. So that was a pretty easy decision to buy it.
Trying on the mask for research, NOT just because it was fun 🙂
But of course it can’t just be a basic mask, even if it looked very pretty in its basic form. The first thing I did was cover it with a layer of lace, which happened to be a remnant cut from my wedding dress (because, surprise!, it was too long ;)).
After brushing on a layer of fabric glue, I started with a layer of EXTREMELY glittery purple paint.
It doesn’t look interesting wet…
But it dries into a really stunning color!
Then I did some trimming on the lace to get the edges to match those of the mask itself.
At this point, I knew I wanted to put some leaves and flowers on it, but I didn’t know much more than that. So I dragged out my fabric stash (what you’re seeing here is what I’d been able to buy during a HUGE sale!), my glue gun and just started messing around.
I knew I wanted to extend the sides of the mask with leaves, so I started there. Maynard helpfully modeled this part for me.
Maynard is an awesome model, even when he’s not facing the camera
You can also see that I’d added a bit of black ink around the eye holes, rather like eyeliner. Just a subtle touch to help draw the viewer’s eye since there was going to be a fair bit going on.
I just played around with different colored flowers and shapes, holding them in place, tweaking things here and there and then suddenly I had a finished mask! I hadn’t planned on giving it so much vertical volume, that just sort of evolved naturally, but I liked how it looked so I went with it. Some costumes I have planned out in precise detail before I ever start them, but others are more free-form, like this was. Always listen to your gut 🙂
A mask! Photos from here out are taken in the bathroom to protect it from over-eager cats.
As I looked at it the next day, I felt like it was 95% there but it needed… something. I didn’t know what. I mulled it over and when I woke up the next morning I knew it: mercury silver spray paint.
Krylon’s Looking Glass spray paint is no ordinary silver paint. It has a truly magical quality to it and I end up using it in almost every costume or prop I paint. Just the slightest mist gives it a mysterious, magical, ethereal touch. I try to always keep a couple cans on hand because I never know when I’ll suddenly need them.
So that morning I took the mask outside and let the paint gently kiss the mask; just enough to give it that magical feeling without taking away the beautiful colors of the paint and flowers. In the photos below (which are a little blurry, sorry, they were taken on my phone) the top photos show details of the flowers unpainted and the bottom have had their silver wash.
Flowers with and without Looking Glass paint
I filled a basket with appropriately magical-looking items and herbs but it didn’t make it into the final image. Oh well. You can see just a little of the vial necklace I made full of purple stones and beads and the gorgeous amulet/brooch. Jewel tones just loved Noemi’s beautiful skin tone!
And now I’ll let you see the completely finished image along with some detail shots! The show trees had just started blooming in the woods and the wild queen anne’s lace was bountiful. Both made a beautiful, more neutral backdrop against Noemi’s vividly colored mask and costume.
Thanks to Noemi for being so patient through all this! I’m very glad to have made a new friend though all this 🙂 And I’m very happy with how this turned out! You’ll all just have to wait a little while longer to see the image where Noemi really proved her devotion to the finished image 😉
Something you’ll know about me if you follow me anywhere or have read any other blog entries is my deep, abiding love for Peter S. Beagle and all of his creations. Yes, he is best known for his beloved masterpiece The Last Unicorn (the same story that was made into an animated film and you probably saw as a child, not grasping its full, profound meaning). The Last Unicorn deserves every bit of praise it gets and more. It’s the most incredible story, full of wonder and love and great sorrow… and joy, despite, or because of, the sorrow. What many people don’t know is that Peter is an exceptionally prolific writer, having written more books and short stories than I can count (A Fine and Private Place is a very close second favorite to The Last Unicorn). And every single one is just as brilliant of a masterpiece as The Last Unicorn.
I actually don’t remember a time when I didn’t know the story of The Last Unicorn. As in the book, “there has never been a time without unicorns,” so there was never a time for me without The Last Unicorn. It came out the year before I was born and I grew up knowing it. My brother and I both loved it, and to this day can still quote nearly the entire thing by heart. We would make a game out of it, seeing how long we could volley the script back and forth. As I got a little older, I started reading the book, and each time I did, I discovered new levels, new depths, new nuances that I hadn’t been old enough to understand before. It’s a common misconception that Unicorn is a children’s story, simply because the movie made from it was animated. There’s nothing wrong with children reading or seeing the movie, but it is a story for grown-ups. You can’t fully appreciate the skillful, deft writing, the terrible tragedy, the glorious splendor, the tear-inducing sacrifice, the depth of the characters until you’ve experienced more of life yourself.
It doesn’t surprise me now that I look back and remember that the very first self portrait I ever took, far before I was a “photographer” or a “self portrait artist” was inspired by the book. The character of the unicorn, magically transformed unwillingly into a human girl for much of the book, taken from immortality into a body she feels dying all around her, resonated so deeply with me. I probably don’t have to draw you a very detailed map of how it relates to my experience of living in a shitty body possessed by ME. And yet the unicorn gains something which sets her apart from all the other unicorns in the world by her ordeal. She learns regret. She learns to love. She is made more full for all her suffering. It’s a hope I cling to for myself, sometimes harder than others, but one I return to again and again.
About two and a half years ago, Peter magically discovered some of my work which had been inspired by his writing (both The Last Unicorn and other stories) and his business manager, Connor Cochran, reached out to me. There is still much under wraps and it will all be revealed in time, but we began working together, which was more than a dream come true for me. Bless him, Peter is the antithesis of the saying “never meet your heroes.” Meeting Peter only me love him and his writing more. There truly are few more kind, generous and relentlessly creative people on earth. And he is this generous with everyone. At The Last Unicorn Screening Tour (which I HIGHLY recommend you attend!!) he will stay until EVERY SINGLE PERSON who would like to meet him, hug him, have him sign their book or take a photo with him is seen. Despite the often very long lines, he doesn’t make you feel rushed, he takes his time and lets you say whatever you need to say. In the moment you’re with him, you are the only person in the entire world and you have his full attention. This does mean the screenings often end in the wee hours of night, and I don’t know how they all do it, those hours would kill me, but it’s just who Peter is.
A little while after I had signed my contract with Conlan Press, Peter’s publishing house run by Connor, I gathered up my nerve and asked Connor if I could borrow Peter and photograph him as DreamWorld‘s King when they were in town for the next screening. To my joy, Connor gave me the go-ahead. This led to a nightmarish few weeks when I frantically created Peter’s incredibly elaborate costume made almost entirely out of paper (fully documented here) but the results were worth every tearful, over-tired night I had getting ready for it. No one could be DreamWorld‘s King better than Peter.
Beloved Of The Crown – Peter as the King, with Dedeker Winston and Katie Johnson as his maids.
Why am I telling you all this? Just to illustrate what an incredibly special and remarkable person Peter truly is, and how wonderful Connor and everyone at Conlan are. They put their all into every single screening. They are genuinely all wonderful people, and Peter is everything you would hope he would be and more. I’ve been fortunate enough to have attended two of them; the first time was the same day that I photographed Peter so I had no energy for dressing up myself for the show, but the second time I went as Amalthea, as seen below (which won the costume contest that night, probably because of my handmade Have A Taco Purse, which I can make for you too!). Seeing the movie in a theater never fails to bring tears to my eyes.]
At the screening as Amalthea (with purse) and back at home.
Which, in my rambling, round-about way, leads to the main thrust of this post. The tour had planned on traveling to multiple countries in Europe this year, and while the movie will still be shown and everyone will still have a fabulous time, Peter will be unable to attend due to a non-threatening health issue. Peter is ok, there’s nothing to worry about, but still… even non-threatening health issues suck. Peter hopes to be back on the road soon, but I thought that it might cheer him up if we all rallied and showed him some love. What do you say? For our beloved author who writes the stories which make us weep simultaneously from sorrow and joy? He has given SO MUCH to the world, let’s try and give even a fraction of it back to him!
What do I mean by that? Well, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. I’ll send them on to Connor who can forward them to Peter. Feel free to leave kind words of encouragement on his Facebook page or send him an email at contact@conlanpress.com. I’m sure he will really appreciate everyone’s show of support!
And let’s face it; we owe him. For decades of wonder, joy and poignant insight. For holding up mirrors full of fantasy which still reflect ourselves back and help us make new discoveries. For every brilliant word typed, every tear shed and every heart which grew in size because of his writing. For showing us what heroes are for. For bringing us unicorns.
Tomorrow I go in for my several-times-a-year nerve-blocking injections. My pain specialist doctor locates the nerve clusters which are causing the most ruckus and injects them with a numbing medication which quiets them down for a while. I end up having to do this about twice a year. It’s not very pleasant; I’m fasted and I have an IV, but at least I’m (usually) fully sedated for the injections themselves. With a previous pain doctor, I woke up during the procedure once and it’s not something I’d like to repeat. They tell most people that they can go back to work the day after their injections but, as usual, I am not most people. I usually end up pretty well bed-bound in pain for about 10 days after them, and I’m still tender for a while after that. We’re going to be doing some extra sites this time so I imagine it might make my recovery a bit less happy than usual even.
But even with the intense recovery period, which Geoff helps me tremendously with (he gets me anything I need, yells at me to lay down unless I’m getting up to use the bathroom, we watch endless movies in bed, he fetches me vegan donuts to break my fast, he makes sure I have plenty of food and water at all times and I’m as comfortable as possible), they do help. The pain never completely goes away, but it knocks it down several numbers on the pain scale after my body settles down. Wish me luck tomorrow! Right now I’m just looking forward to having it be over; I’m done with anticipating it.
I’m very excited to announce that I will be featured in a local gallery, the Creative Arts Group! The show will run for almost nine weeks, from June 6th through August 5th. They will be showing eight of my DreamWorld pieces, with models Dedeker Winston, Katie Johnson, Dan Donohue and Travis Weinand. This will also be the first show that I’ve been able to use my fancy new printing paper for; Hahnemuhle fine art pearl paper (provided by the truly excellent Lauren from POV Evolving printers in downtown LA). It’s quite spectacular looking!
In addition to the images, they will also be displaying costume pieces and props I’ve made for the images, including the entire flower-festooned Spring Faerie costume. This is always how I’ve envisioned DreamWorld images being shown, with the costumes and props alongside the finished images.
They will also be showing A Poisoned Sleep Of Kissless Dreams, my very latest image and one I’ve spent almost two years working on, and one which you can still win your own print of!
A Poisoned Sleep And Kissless Dreaming Sarah Allegra – model: Katie Johnson
I’m planning on being there the first Saturday of the show, June 6th, from 12-2 for a short opening reception if you’d like to stop by! If you do come by, firstly, thank you, and secondly, feel free to mention to the gallery staff that you’re there to see my work 🙂
Many, many thanks to everyone for your help and support along my art journey, whether you’re able to come to this show or not! The gallery info is below. I hope to see you all there! 🙂
Lastly, don’t forget that there is still time to enter my ME-awareness-raising print giveaway! Just check out my previous post for info on how to enter. It’s easy and FREE! The Yellow King will be angry with you if you don’t enter the giveaway 😉
I’m so happy so many of you have joined in my print giveaway! There is still time for you to enter, which is free and easy to do! Scroll down below for details, but most of the ways you enter are simply by sharing/retweeting messages onto various social media outlets – all of which are now embedded in this post! Just head down to the very end and you’ll see all the different ways you can participate without even leaving this page!
If you missed my last post, let me summarize it for you. Today, May 12th is Invisible Illness Day; a day we dedicate to raising awareness about illnesses and diseases which can be deadly and have devastating consequences, yet show little to no outward sign. Every single person with any of these illnesses, such as fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s Disease, (and, of course, myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, which I have*) has been told at least once, “But you don’t look sick.” As if that invalidates our decades of suffering. Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t meet your criteria of what a “chronically ill” person looks like; you’re right, I’m 100% fine! In fact, I’m going to go complete a decathlon, now that I know I’m healthy.
Ok, so clearly simply not appearing outwardly sick doesn’t mean we aren’t ill. In fact, most people who saw me on the street would probably assume I was a perfectly healthy girl; although one who doesn’t put a lot of effort into her appearance. The reality is that I am partially house-bound, I can only drive short distances on very good days, almost all “out of the house” errands have to be done on weekends when Geoff can drive and help me, I’m in constant pain and exhausted every single second of my life. My energy reserves are very low and I have nothing extra to spare on “getting pretty” before I go out. As long as I’m wearing actual clothes (you have no idea how many times I’ve almost left my house without key clothing items), that’s enough for me. Shove on a hat so I don’t have to address my naturally curly hair and I’m good!
While I never overly cared about what I looked like in public, I do find myself missing wearing pretty things. I put far, far more thought and effort into picking out my pajama outfits that my regular clothes outfits. I’ve accrued quite a collection of PJs at this point, so I can at least feel like those are cute and colorful.
While worrying about one’s physical appearance would seem pretty far down on the priority list of someone with a neurological disease with no cure, and it is for me most of the time, it’s a little more than that. It’s just one more tiny slice of normal life that chronic illness takes away from you; one more reason for you to resent it. I don’t actually want to wear the dresses getting dusty in my closet, I want the option to choose to wear them. That make seem like a small difference, but from this side, it feels big.
While I don’t feel like I can spare the energy for looking beautiful most of the time, beauty is still deeply important to me, and it’s important that I leave the world with more beauty in it than I found it. It’s like when you go camping with your dad; the camp site is going to be cleaner when you leave than when you got there (or at least, that’s how it was with me dad ;)). I’ve come to realize that beauty is a big part of why I’m so drawn to art and to create; it’s a very tangible way of leaving the world a little more beautiful. And in this case, it’s taking the hideous ugliness of disease and transmuting it into something lovely.
With that in mind, I want to introduce my latest image to you; the one I will be giving away a 10″ x 15″ print of on May 29th!
I spoke to you a bit in my last post about why this image is so special… and I’m going that a little bit again 🙂 For one thing, this is a DreamWorld and Enchanted Sleep crossover piece; the first image of mine which belongs equally to both worlds. It spoke to me on both levels, and when I was torn about which series to include it in, I finally decided I didn’t HAVE to choose and it could live in both. Because, while in some ways, DreamWorld is a bit of escapism and fantasy for me, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. Not many of its dark characters have been photographed yet, but they will be introduced over time. Even with their benevolent protectors, their King and Queen, the creatures in DreamWorld still have problems.
At the same time, it helps me to look at ME through the lens of myth and fantasy. Viewing it as a dragon to be slain, a mountain to climb, a thorn in my side to bear; they all help me live with the reality of ME a little more easily.
I have long felt a connection between the stories of Sleeping Beauty and my experience with ME. A poison, an enchanted sleep (giving birth to my photo series’ title), hope of an awakening under the right conditions… there is a great deal of overlap. With that said, let me show you the new image!
Now, this file ended up being a composite of… I don’t even know how many images. A LOT. To give you an idea of the huge scale of the piece, here it is with a normal, full-sized image from another shoot with Katie on top of it.
So, just roughly eyeballing it, I’d say this is, what, 5-6 times the size of an average image? And while my camera doesn’t produce the HUGEST files imaginable, this is still pretty darn big. It was such an enormous file, I had to wait until I’d upgraded my laptop before I could actually work on it. Any time I tried to edit it on my old laptop, it would crash my whole computer after about 10 minutes of work. With my new laptop, it only crashes every few days, and usually only crashes Photoshop, instead of my entire system. Much better 🙂 All said, this took almost two years from start to finish. I’d pick it up, do a little work, get overwhelmed and put it back down. Then I decided it had to be done in time for the giveaway, so that gave me the motivation to finish it up.
Katie really endured a lot for this shot, poor thing. The area I shot it in was a naturally ivy-covered area of my old yard… and unfortunately also FULL of spiders and spider webs.
I’d made a homemade spider repellent (nothing which would harm them, just something with tea tree oil to make the area less appealing to a few days) and sprayed it liberally around the shooting area in the days leading up to the shoot.
But despite it, it was a pretty intimidating place to ask any sane girl to lay down in, relax, close her eyes and pretend to be asleep. I promised Katie that I would watch for any spiders actually crawling on her and scoot them off. I promised no harm would come to her, and, bless her, she trusted me.
Now despite it being just covered in cobwebs and spiders, I ended up having to add all the cobwebs in Photoshop. I downloaded a special Photoshop bundle of brushes shaped like cobwebs, which got me started. It took a ton of manipulation of each little bunch to make it look like it way laying naturally over the different areas, adding light and shading to blend it in to the environment.
After I got Katie situated, I climbed up on a ladder and started shooting. But I quickly realized that the ladder wasn’t tall enough to get the framing I wanted, which led to shooting about a million individual frames which I pieced together in Photoshop, which is why it’s such a huge file. There were some challenges in making everything align since I wasn’t using a tripod, but it helped that Katie had trusted me so completely and was lying perfectly still.
I had also shot a purple smoke bomb pouring out of the bottle (separately from Katie, I didn’t think that would be good for her to breath) but then that ended up not really looking right either, leading to another element I had to create in Photoshop.
I always try to do as much work in camera as possible, but sometimes the real world just doesn’t accommodate you!
Katie’s bravery and willingness to do whatever it took to get “the shot” made me create this virtual plaque for her:
Thank you, Katie 🙂 This image would not exist without you. It’s one of my very favorite images and I’m SO happy we went through all the difficulties of making it, even though I wanted to tear my hair out at times!
Another thing about this image that’s special is that it will be the first to be printed on my new, museum-quality paper of choice: Hahnemuhle pearl paper. You really have to see it to believe it. It is a thick, luscious paper with a bit of texture to it, similar to watercolor paper. What pushed me over the edge into switching to this paper though, is the very subtle, pearlescent shimmer built into the paper. It is magic. And it compliments the ethereal nature of my work so well, it seemed we were made for each other.
And did I mention that this special new print is a $400 value?
Would you like to win this very special print for yourself? Instructions are below! If you already saw my first post, skip on to the info about how to enter, if not, please consider taking a moment to read it and see why I’m so passionate about promoting May 12th and my giveaway!
I would like to say that I spent a great deal of reflection on coming up with the idea of my bed being my kingdom, but it was more of a response to thinking, “Shit, I have this video… now I need a name for it…” But I think it holds true despite it’s spur-of-the-moment conception.
When you spend the vast majority of your time inside your house, it becomes your entire world. If, on a good day, I take Calantha for a walk around the block, I feel like a Viking setting off to explore new lands (but not planning on Blood Eagle-ing anyone). If my house is my world, my bedroom is my home, and my bed becomes my kingdom.
Though it is a queen-sized kingdom, it is a kingdom nonetheless. This is where I am most myself, most honest, most raw, most pure. I spend most of my time here, in my PJs, hair a mess and no makeup (because who’s going to see it, I don’t feel like putting it on, and I especially don’t feel like washing it off). This room is most set up for my comfort and is bent to my will. Why is there such a huge pile of stuff always on my nightstand, or next to my side of the bed? Because then I can reach it easily, no matter what state I’m in. Geoff’s side is spick and span, while mine is a crazy jungle, but that’s how it has to be. In this whole world of things which cause us pain and discomfort, we need there to be someplace that is designed for us. That is, usually, our beds. And in my bed, I rule.
Some people are surprised to learn I have a chronic illness, especially one which confines me to my house and bed so much, since I seem to produce a lot of art. It’s all the result of verycareful planning of everything. I keep my shoots very short and I plan several concepts I can shoot one right after the other while I have my model. My shoot is usually the only major thing I have planned for the week. Actually, it’s usually the only major thing I have planned that month. If we’re driving to a location, my model will usually drive us since I’m often feeling too tired. I try to bang out as many concepts as I possibly can, then I crash. Usually the next two or three days will be awful, and I will pay dearly for my shoot. But after that starts to wear off, I can sort through my images and work on editing them… which is only possible because I can do that with my laptop while lying in bed. If I had to sit at a desk, I could not be a photographer.
Using my laptop and my Wacom tablet, I can create art again. There was a while as I was getting sick where I was truly terrified that art would be taken away from me. In one sense, that did happen, since I had to put away the pencils and paintbrushes which became too painful to wield, but art abhors a vacuum as much as nature does, and photography quickly sprang up in its place, with help from my photographer husband.
Photography has given me a voice. But it’s more than that. It’s given a voice to all of us who suffer from these invisible illnesses. When I started shooting the images which would become a part of my Enchanted Sleep series, portraying what life with ME is like, I never dreamed that other people with illnesses would flock to it like they have. I unintentionally tapped into an underserved community, and those within it have made their approval loudly known. I didn’t set out to capture anything but my own experiences, but in doing so, I captured all of ours.
ME alone effects millions across the globe. There are millions and millions more who bear other invisible illnesses, and you might have no idea that they carry these with them everywhere they go. Most likely, you know someone with one of these illnesses, though it might be undiagnosed. Most of the invisible illnesses tend to be diagnoses of exclusion; meaning there’s no one test for this disease, so you have to rule out EVERYTHING else that it could be before you decide what it is. It’s a long, grueling process, and not everyone really wants to know what’s wrong with them anyway. For me, I couldn’t stand not knowing.
Your aunt who often complains of pain? Your friend who frequently has to cancel plans? Your sibling who gets migraines which always come at the worst times? They may have one of these diseases.
The online chronic illness community (spoonies, we call ourselves) is extremely supportive, but we need to have healthy people on our side too. We need real changes to be made in the world, and frankly, we are too ill to do it all on our own.
These are not diseases which merely dampen our fun or mildly cramp our style, these are diseases which kill. Sometimes that death is a suicide, as the patients cannot stand the suffering any longer. Even if left to more “natural” courses, these illnesses are evil thieves and rob us of years. They take away our livelihood, our joys, our passions and, eventually, our lives.
Here’s how this giveaway works. It’s going to be very easy and there are quite a lot of ways for you to enter!
First thing: subscribe to my blog if you haven’t already. There’s a button in the upper right-hand section of the screen for you to enter your email address (which you may do safely, without fear of spamming or other annoyances). Do that, then move on to step two:
You have your choice here! You can either:
Retweet the facts I’ve tweeted about ME (these are embedded at the bottom of this post to make things super easy – you can like or retweet it without even leaving this page!)
(The Facebook and Instagram posts and tweets are all embedded at the bottom of this post to make things super easy – you can like, retweet or share it without even leaving this page!)
Like and re-blog this post if you’re a WordPress user
You can do all of those, too! One note, if you choose to retweet any of my tweets, each new retweet will count as an entry. I’ve given you quite a lot to choose from, mainly because I couldn’t narrow it down myself any more! 😉 So, for example, if you retweet all 11 tweets, that will count as 11 entries for you. However, if you retweet the same tweet more than once, that does NOT count at as extra entry. The maximum possible Twitter-related entries you can get is 11. The same idea goes for the other social networking sites too. If you share my Facebook post, that’s an entry. If you share the same post twice (which I’m not sure you can do, but let’s say for argument’s sake that you can), then you still only get one entry.
And lastly, whichever social media platform you decide to use to enter the contest from, you must like/follow me there (and here on the blog) for the entry to count!
Now, those are all very important ways for you to enter the contest to win a gorgeous print for yourself. A large part of why the entries are based in social media is to help raise more awareness about ME (and other invisible illnesses) by word of mouth. However, there is another way you can get more entries for yourself.
Any purchases on ANY of the items I sell from today, May 4th, through midnight, PST, May 27th will count as entries! This means that EACH INDIVIDUAL ITEM that you buy counts as its own entry. If you buy five t-shirts from my Red Bubble shop, that’s five extra entries for you!
And on top of the purchases going toward extra entries for you, 25 PERCENT of ALL PROFITS on ALL ITEMS purchased will be donated to theMicrobe Discovery Project! The Microbe Discovery project is a wonderful organization here in the US actively looking for a cause and cure for ME. I strongly believe in what they do, which is why I have chosen them to benefit from my sales.
It’s a very win-win situation! You get to buy whatever it is that you’ve had your eye on, you get extra entries into the print giveaway and ME research is supported at the same time!
On May 29th, I will randomly pick one winner from all the entries and that person will receive the print! It will be signed and numbered and shipped to wherever you live, even if it’s the other side of the world! 🙂
One last note about purchases, if you make a purchase, please leave a comment here on the blog and tell me what you purchased and where it was from. Some of the sites I sell through hide the buyer’s info from me, so I won’t always be able to tell who bought what. I want to make sure your purchases are properly accounted for!
Prices are the same regardless of where you buy, so there’s no need to worry about having “hiked-up gallery prices” 🙂 My Etsy shop also has a few pieces of “wearable art,” some of which is inspired by DreamWorld characters and some of which was inspired by The Last Unicorn! There’s also a whole section of ME-inspired images from my Enchanted Sleep series!
Through my Red Bubble shop I sell all of the following items with my images on them:
Aly took and sent me this lovely shot of her carrying her tote bag! It was a bit strange at first to see my friend carrying a bag with my face in it 😉 We we both quite thrilled with the quality and according to Aly, it’s been getting tons of compliments and the straps are the perfect length!
INTROSPECTIVE is much more about self-discovery than it is about knowing what f-stops are or having fancy equipment. You don’t even have to have an actual camera; your phone will do perfectly well! The course emphasizes self portraits as a way to get to know yourself better, but the definition of “self portrait” here is quite loose. You never have to appear in an image unless you really want to. What I mean by “self portrait” in this case is simply any photograph which shows me something about who you are as a person!
This is a very relaxed, reflective class. There are no grades and no wrong answers! For eight weeks, you will receive a new theme each week and your assignment will be to create an image around that theme which reflects you. Love, joy and fears, for example, are all things you would be asked to create around.
This class is very unique! I modeled it after my own journey of self-discovery as I started taking self portraits. The art therapy was so helpful and healing to me that I wanted to give that back to the world in some way, so I createdINTROSPECTIVE!
And as an extra bonus, here’s a special coupon code for INTROSPECTIVE! Use the code May12ME25 to take 25 percent off the cost of the course! Now that’s a win-win-win!!
I know you guys hear me talk about ME quite a lot, but here’s the thing. It matters. It really, really fucking matters.
There is so much confusion, misunderstanding and so many flat-out lies about ME that we all need to work extra hard to shine the light of truth on it. It’s not all the public’s fault; after all, they’ve been lied to by medical professionals for decades. It all came unraveling in the 80’s when ME’s name was intentionally changed to “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and given the belittling nicknames of “the yuppie flu,” “the disease of depressed, menopausal women” and, more recently, “fat, lazy housewife disease,” just so insurance companies could deny patients coverage.
ME does not discriminate. It does not target people by color ,gender, social status or age. It attacks anyone and everyone it can. It destroys lives. It brings promising careers to grinding halts. It is not a way to “get a free ride;” we struggle just to sit up and get out of bed.
It could be your sister. It could be your boyfriend or girlfriend.
It could you.
How many more lives have to be sacrificed on the alter of insurance companies’ desires to not pay out before we get change? How many more patients have to take their own lives in despair? How many more seriously ill patients have to endure the most hateful slurs you can imagine being thrown at them? How many doctors will sigh, roll their eyes and tell us there’s nothing wrong with us psychically, that our problems are all in our heads?
No more.
We cannot let this happen to one more person. Too many have endured this already.
We have the power to make radical changes. We have the power to change society’s view of us, to force the government to give us proper funding, to stop treating us like Cinderella instead of their own daughters. We have the power to unlock the mystery of ME and find a cure. We CAN do this. But we must come together, make our voices heard and DEMAND it. It will never be easily handed to us. Too many huge companies are invested in not spending any money on those with ME. But while history shows us many ugly truths, it also shows us that we, the common people, have great power in our hands to bring about the changes we want.
We just have to ask for it loudly enough.
Please join me in demanding change for patients with ME. Things cannot continue the way they are any longer.
And as you help me advocate for invaluable change in the world, you’ll also be giving yourself a chance to win a gorgeous, fine art print 🙂 Help me with this. And thank you.
[*Because the United States does not officially recognize the name “myalgic encephalomyelitis,” despite decades of public outcry for change and hundreds of thousands signing petitions, they continue to stick to “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” or “fibromyalgia.” Depending on which doctor of mine you talk to, I may have three different diagnoses. The US is especially complicated in how it defines – or, rather, it’s lack of definition – the differences between the three so it’s impossible to talk about one in the US without talking about all of them. For the record, they are NOT all the same disease, but that is essentially how the US treats them. I know that what I have is ME and not the other two, but many of my doctors had not have heard of ME until I told them about it. ME has scientific, diagnosable guidelines, which I fit, but the country still refuses to adopt the name and its excellent guidelines. If you’re interested in learning more about why this is, here’s an article for you, but for this post, I will leave the subject there.]
First things first: the light. Let’s get to the winner of The Blue Ribbon! Drum roll please…
Congratulations, Brittany D. Perkins!!! You havewon a beautiful, 10″ x 15″ print of The Blue Ribbon!. Your print will come on beautiful, shimmering, pearlized, archival paper and will be hand-signed. Please send an email to me at sarah@sarahallegra.com with your mailing address and I’ll get it to you!
What do you guys think? Was that fun? Something we should do again? Did the tweeting format work for you? Let me know your thoughts and I can fine-tune my contest process to make it better for everyone! Don’t forget that my fundraising will continue for the entire month of May, so stock up on your art purchases now while they’ll do the most good!
I think I was telling you guys about the evolution of this character. I’ve always had a thing for horns and antlers on people (see my very first self portrait as proof) and wanted to work them into DreamWorld from the beginning. As with most mythologies, I felt there was room for a Puckish, trickster character, which is what I had in mind when I started constructing this creature. The beginning of my work on him coincided with the beginning of True Detective, a pure coincidence, but True Detective’s ominous Yellow King bled into my concept, and before I knew it my trickster had transformed beyond a mere Puck or even Loki into the DreamWorld version of The King In Yellow.
DreamWorld is an ever-evolving place, and while this King is the first sinister character to be portrayed, there are other forces at work. We will meet them eventually. For now, I think it is enough to know that the King in Yellow has been sent into exile by DreamWorld’s true King for trying to usurp the throne and plunge DreamWorld into darkness. He has been foiled for now, and is thus known as they Exiled King, though some still whisper of the King in Yellow and restoring him to his rightful, dark glory along with those who seek the same goals… but I don’t worry. The King is strong and benevolent. And we haven’t even met the Queen yet, though we will soon. She also rules for good, and is not to be taken lightly.
Let the whispers and secrets travel where they will. The King in Yellow has been sent into exile as a merciful punishment, but I doubt a second grab for the throne would be met with such leniency.
Now that you know about the Exiled King, want to see how he came to life?
My initial inspiration for the antlers was the Makhor goat’s horns, such as seen in this stock image:
Horns are always tricky to build for human heads. Making them stable but light, keeping them balanced on the head while trying to appear that there’s no supporting structure at all… they’re always a nightmare to make. And I knew these ones were going to be the largest pair I’d made yet. As usual, I dove in without a real plan and figured it out as I went.
I started with a regular headband and some strong but light wire, wrapped around itself and twisted generously onto the headband. I began introducing the twisted shape by wrapping it around my arm a few times.
I wrapped a thin layer of newspaper over each wire frame, adding a layer of masking tape on top to help it hold its shape and smooth it.
Looking very lop-sided at the moment
I initially tried spraying the antlers with spray adhesive to try to help smooth the antlers further, but all it really did was make it tacky, even after it had dried. I sighed and decided I’d try and use it to my advantage by covering the antlers with a layer of metallic gold tissue paper (which smells really weird, by the way). I filled in some of the larger dips and gaps with hot glue and added a little more tissue paper, but I knew I’d end up having to do a little smoothing to them in post production. I don’t remember why now, but I ended up getting these finished just the evening before my morning shoot, so I didn’t have more time to tinker with them and make them absolutely perfect.
You can see here the careful support structure I created literally with toothpicks and popsicle sticks broken into smaller strips. Sometimes the most straight-forward way is the best way 🙂 They’re also reinforced with a little bit of monofilament line to help them not bow away from each other.
With the antlers done, I moved onto the leaf mantle. I used approximately a billion fake leaves for this which I’d collected over several years and a number of projects. I still found myself nearly running out by the end and had to ration them carefully. I concentrated on the leaves around the face first, which also conveniently covered the antler’s headband and support structures.
A full mantle of leaves
I’ve had this one vest in my “costume” supplies for a very long time and I just love it. It looks very rugged and home-spun and fits a very wide variety of looks and styles. I’m pretty sure it was made for someone closer to my size than Dan’s, so I quickly added extra length to it by cutting straight through the shoulder seem and building a new shoulder strap with leaves hot glued to each other. The yard provided a wealth of beautiful acorns to choose from and use as buttons. And don’t worry, the squirrels still had more to eat than they ever could.
Next was the big leaf amulet. I’d gotten this pack of huge, very realistic leaves probably two years ago and had been holding on to them, waiting for them to become useful. Now was their time! This heavy chain was also in my stash for similar reasons, and became a lovely chain for what would be a leaf amulet.
Some smaller, gold-dusted leaves, a large gold key and an amber-colored, leaf-shaped crystal finished it off.
Almost done!
Leaf slipper tops
The very last thing I made were “leaf slippers,” for lack of a better word. They were just several leaves glued together with elastic straps to help keep them on Dan’s feet; super easy!
Leaf slipper bottoms
I also cut up some strips of a golden-brown, rustic-looking cotton to tie around Dan’s sleeves and pant legs, but that would be assembled the day of. As far as my prep work went, I was done! I honestly can’t remember exactly how long the whole costume took to make… several days of solid work, no sleep? Eight weeks? I have no idea, but it was long. When I’m deeply involved in a project like this, time melts away for any practical use.
Before I get more into this, let me back up and tell you about Dan Donohue, who so beautifully brought my character to life. Dan is celebrated actor, best known for his extensive theater work. He played Scar in Disney’s Broadway version of The Lion King and left for Oregon almost immediately after our shoot to go play Henry the III at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s version of Henry the III, as well as the father in their production of A Wrinkle In Time. You would never believe from meeting him that he does evil and sinister so well; he is truly one of the kindest, most enthusiastic and genuinely lovely people I’ve had the pleasure of working with. But the moment I told him to be a villain, it all fell away and for a second I had to catch my breath because he so completely embodied The King In Yellow. Dan is a muse if I’ve ever met one and a pure delight to work with! He’s also very creative and funny, as I’ll get into more later.
The morning of the shoot came quickly, Dan and I found our location and the entire shoot was easy and felt effortless. There may have been a bit more effort on Dan’s part trying to keep his antlers and mantle from toppling over if he moved his head too far in any direction, but it seemed that his theater experience really paid off and helped him manage this probably cumbersome bit of costume beautifully.
Antler wrangling
Generally when I shoot new DreamWorld characters, I edit one or two images; maybe three if I feel they’re all really compelling, but in this instance I edited five. This is almost unprecedented. The only other time I’ve edited more photos from a single concept, with no costume or location changes was for the Katie’s World set. That says quite a lot about how perfectly Dan was able to become the Exiled King. But enough talking about them. You want to see the images, right?
You’ve seen this first one already since I used it to tease the series, but I’m posting it again so the whole set can be seen together as intended. To set the mood, here are the two quotes which most directly influenced how I took the set, one from Robert W. Chamber’s book The King In Yellow and one from True Detective.
–Cassilda’s Song, The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
“Him who eats time. Him robes; it’s a wind of invisible voices. Rejoice, death is not the end! Rejoice, death is not the end! Rejoice, Carcosa!”
– Miss Delores, True Detective episode 7, After You’ve Gone
The Shadows Lengthen
The Shadows Lengthen – detail
The Shadows Lengthen – detail. Dan’s hand here kills me every time, it’s SO PERFECT. I never knew a single hand could be so expressive, yet it is.
Pliable Reality – shot using a home-made “Lensbaby” which was the top of a water bottle
Pliable Reality – detail
Pliable Reality – detail
Pliable Reality – detail
Where Black Stars Rise
Where Black Stars Rise – detail
Where Black Stars Rise – detail
Where Black Stars Rise – detail
The Tatters Of The King
The Tatters Of The King – detail
The Tatters Of The King – detail
And perhaps my favorite of them all….
His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices
His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail
His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail
His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail
His Robe Is A Wind of Invisible Voices – detail
Whew, still with me? I know that was a long post, but I had a lot of photos to cover!
He’s not REALLY evil, he just pretends really well!
The only sad thing is that we never got to see how well Dan managed his leaf slippers, but trust me, he killed it like everything else.
Dan as Richard the III – Copyright Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Thank you so much to Dan for being the perfect King in Yellow and furthermore being extremely patient as I slowly edited all of these!! Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to see the Exiled King’s companions and cohorts! Dan has been invited back again whenever he returns to California, so he may pop up in more photos; I hope so 🙂
When I started planning my DreamWorld series, one of the first characters that came to me was a dryad; a nature spirit representing our connection with nature. I saw her as a strong, benevolent queen, keeping watch over the woodland creatures and protecting them. The first concept I came up with that made my heart pitter-patter with excitement was the idea of building a huge crown for her from sticks and branches. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this, but I had a vision. And I have learned over the years that having a vision will pave the way to making it a reality, regardless of if I know how that will come about.
A sample of the three completed photos
I tried to get a lot of photos to document the lengthy creation process, so this will be a longer post. Bear with me! Or just skim over it and scroll down to the finished photos 🙂
After I sketched out my designs, I decided to just dive into the project and tackle each step as it came. So the first part was simple; I needed sticks and branches. There are lots of trees in my yard, so there was no shortage of sticks to choose from! The challenge was to try and find ones that already held the kind of shapes and curves I was looking for.
I started by bundling the branches together into small clumps, and eventually joining the smaller clumps into larger ones.
It was quite simple and low-tech, it just took wire, wire cutters, pliers, time and patience.
I gently guided the branches into the directions I wanted them to go, and wired them into place.
Calantha bomb
Once the shape was right, I spray painted it with various layers of black, bronze and silver paints, giving it a subtle, organic variation of colors.
At this point I started working on the dress and, in particular, the lace leaves. Oh, I was excited about the lace leaves! I’d found a really beautiful yard of lace with an iridescent shimmer to it. I cut out hundreds of leaves from it in several different sizes. And I decided that any mild flaws would only enhance the natural and organic look I wanted 😉 After the leaves were all cut out, I painted veins on them with pearly fabric paint; you can see a small sample of the veined leaves trying on my bathroom floor below. I had to paint them in the bathroom so they could dry without the cats trying to help.
Lace leaves and happy owl shower curtain!
After they were painted, I created a small landscape of bubble wrap and plastic bottles to give a wide variety of angles for them to take shape from, and covered them thoroughly with spray adhesive. As they dried, they took on gentle curves and curls much more like actual leaves.
Most of the leaves were for the dress, but I wanted to bring a few of them onto the crown as well.
Hot glue is a crafty girl’s best friend.
Lastly, I added pinecones and a small plant holder which I thought had a very regal look, all of which had been painted to match the rest of the crown.
The $2 plant holder, pinecones and lace leaves
This whole time I still wasn’t sure how I would attach the crown to my model. The crown was really pretty huge, fragile and awkwardly shaped, but it was quite light. After some deliberation, I decided to try mounting it to some extra thick foam board with zip ties, using a piece long enough piece to run from the base of the crown to where the model’s hips would be. I covered the back of the foam board with adhesive-backed Velcro, and cut matching Velcro lengths, planning to use them as straps around the model’s shoulders and waist.
There was the crown; next was the dryad’s dress! I wanted it to be long and flowing, with a very natural feel to it. I planned on having the bottom of the dress be cut into strips, using fabrics with different textures and colors to help emulate the look and feel of a tree.
The back of the dress, lace pinned onto and under it.
I used plain, unbleached muslin to make the dress, both for it’s inexpensive cost, and because I suspected it would dye easily. After the form of the dress was created, I tied a rope between two trees to make a clothesline, bought a HUGE amount of instant ice tea and a spray bottle…
I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed it… letting each layer dry, so the color could build up and have a natural gradation. It worked, but oh my heavens, did it SMELL. I drink tea, and I’ve never found its smell offensive, but apparently I’d never experienced it in such a large and intense quantity. I had to email the model and warn her that her dress would be beautiful, but stinky. It had to lay out on a chair on the porch the first night; I couldn’t even deal with it being in the bathroom.
Once it was dyed, I needed to tie up the metaphoric loose ends of the dress; put grommets in the back, sew the ribbons around the waist, etc. Byron and Maynard both did their best to help with this.
They do their best despite their lack of thumbs
After that, it was finally time for the part I was most excited about: attaching the lace leaves! All along I had been planning on creating a collar and cuffs out of the leaves, and I was quite excited to have finally reached that point after all the work I’d done leading up to it.
Hot glue again works wonders
I had suspected that I would need to paint in some shadows to define the various layers of the leaves; with white on white, I thought it would look like a white blob from far away. After some thought, I decided to “paint” the shadows on using eye shadow. I wanted the shadows to be very light; I love the pearly iridescence of the leaves and I didn’t want to cover that up. I thought eye shadow would offer me a wide range or affordable colors (and I ended up just using an eye shadow variety kit I’d had forever) and allow me to gradually build up subtle changes of color. After working on the dress all day, and the shoot looming in the near future, I spent one whole evening painting eye shadow in between the leaves of the collar and cuffs (with an awful headache, I might add). I loved the result; it was beautiful and just like I had wanted. To help preserve everything, since shadow can smear so easily, and also fortify the shapes of the collar and cuffs, I gave them all a light mist of spray adhesive to bring it all together.
That was the wrong thing to do.
Somehow, the spray adhesive turned my carefully constructed, beautifully built-up shading into a nasty, muddy blob. It looked awful. I wanted to cry. At this point, I was only a day away from the shoot, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I absolutely couldn’t use the dress the way it looked. And it was now very late on a day I’d spent every hour of working on the dress, I was tired, cranky and tearful. Just to feel like I was doing something potentially useful, I painted on a couple different colored swatches of acrylic paint I had on hand for another project, and decided to let the whole thing dry overnight. I’d figure it out in the morning.
The acrylic paint worked. And I ended up liking the end result of the paint even more than I’d liked the initial eye shadow ones. It still took a lot of time to do the next day, but I was able to work on it without feeling panicked or totally stressed out, because I knew it was going to look beautiful. And of course, acrylic paint dries quite quickly, which helped!
The back of the painted lace collar
One of the cuffs
So much work, but so worth it!
There! The costume was done! All I had to do now was shoot the photos.
I had been envisioning one of my go-to models for this, Dedeker Winston. I love working with Dedeker; we’ve been creating images together for several years now, and she always delivers above and beyond what I ask of her. It also turned that she especially likes dryads, so she was very enthusiastic from the beginning! Since this was going to be a more challenging shoot, I asked my sister-in-law Kim, who is herself a very talented artist, if she would come along and assist. Kim was also excited about the shoot, so the three of us got up a bit early on a Saturday morning and went out to one of my favorite woods. Kim was also kind enough to take some behind the scenes photos for me, which I will share with you here 🙂
Getting Dedeker into the costume required a bit of work and was definitely not something I would have been able to do without Kim being there. Dedeker had to step into the dress, I strapped her into the crown while Kim stabilized it and kept the branches from gouging Dedeker’s eyes out. After that I got the back laced up around the foam board. I had Dedeker stand on a stool to give her extra height and presence, adding to her ethereal feel.
Helping Dedeker onto the stool; it was not very easy for her to navigate with all that she was wearing.
I had been considering adding an additional underskirt of some really beautiful, shimmery green fabric I’d had in my fabric stash. Once I saw Dedeker with the crown in the actual location, I thought it would add a lot, so I quickly safety-pinned it under the dress.
There is a Frisbee golf course at this wood, and one of the “holes” is quite near the location where we were shooting. Every now and then a golfer wandered into the background. No one seemed to think what we were doing was particularly odd.
Frisbee golfers golfing
I made some bird stand-ins out of soft foam sheets and a little wire. I thought it would be useful to have something casting a realistic shadow when it came to adding in the birds in post.
I clambered around on the trees, trying to find the perfect location to shoot from. I went tumbling off this log at one point, but managed to twist in the air and not land on my camera.
More shooting
I had my photos! The weather had been perfect, and I was really excited about the shots I got. Next it was time to edit them, and add in the birds and squirrels. Editing ended up being more difficult and complicated than I had expected (which often happens) but I got through them all eventually.
I had been taking photos of the birds at my feeder and yard with this shoot in mind, so I had built up a bit of a library already. Stalking the birds for so long has given me a much greater appreciation for wildlife photographer; it can take a long time, LOTS of patience and a fair bit of luck to get the shots you want.
I’m really pleased with the final images, and even more pleased that I managed to create these with a very limited budget. The sticks and branches were free, I already had the wire and some of the fabric. The only money I spent money on was some fabric, paint, instant ice tea and the crown decoration. All together I’d guess I spent about $40 or $50 on this, most of which went to the different colors of spray paint. Huge budgets are not mandatory to create great things!
Below are the the final edited photos, along with some detail shots from each one; the small size these have to be on the internet just can’t display everything I’d like you to be able to see.
The Court Of The Dryad Queen
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
The Court Of The Dryad Queen – detail
Annunciation
Annunciation – detail
Annunciation – detail
Annunciation – detail
The Queen’s Consort
The Queen’s Consort
The Queen’s Consort
By the way, does anyone know what kind of bird this is? It’s one of my favorites who frequents the feeder; I’d like to know what to call her!
Thank you so much to Dedeker and Kim for their help in making these images happen, and to Geoff for all his support! I couldn’t have done it without you guys. I’m so pleased to be able to have these photos completed. They really sum up what I want DreamWorld to be about; beautiful, ethereal, mysterious characters with a lot of production value. Thanks to all who read all the way down to here! 🙂
Mythic Pictures 