Exquisite Death

Exquisite Death
Originally uploaded by Kalyber

I know I should sleep at night. I know I should clean the office. Both were on my to do list last night but when I got the anatomy image above from the free goodies Dover offers each week well I was compelled to create.

What to do, what to do? Not a question about sleep or clean but about Photoshop brushes. I tried a variety of techniques and played with text, texture and color for hours last night. I'm tired but fairly satisfied with the resulting digital collage.

I didn't know where this was going to go when I started. Was the man going to be central or a piece of the final? It was a complete mystery to me. I looked through the small collection of images I have on the new computer to see what else I could put with this guy and found the raven. I can't remember where the raven is from, it wasn't properly identified (bad me for not changing the name when I saved it) but I knew where things were going to go for this piece as soon as I saw it.

I went to the internet and found Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven to use as background text. Then I went to The Graphics Fairy's site to find the heart illustration, I had to change my search to medical heart because Karen has a lot of beautiful valentine type hearts which just weren't what I was looking for. I came up with the text myself - inspired or stupid you tell me. Because It's digital I have a layered copy that I can continue to work on so the text can be changed - it's kind of a work in progress.

Please tell me what you think.

Katie