Beacon of Courage Page

Our next task for the Life Book 2015 project was to make a Beacon of Light. I started watching the video but the image was just that little bit too sweet for me. During the meditation video I had thought of a lion and also of a strong woman image and I wanted to incorporate them into my Beacon page. For the techniques I used I followed very much what was explained but on occasions I went my own way.

Although my image pales by comparison I thought it was only fair to show you the original painting from which I drew my inspiration. It's a painting by Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1460, so well clear of copyright!) but very much my interpretation emphasizing the eyes by making them bigger. 

Most other elements are per the lesson so I'm not going to explain them here (so as not to infringe copyright!), but here are some details where you can see the page is very much multi layered.

And with a lot of collage going on too, as well as a fair amount of sparkle as you can see above. 

I already knew I wanted to add a lion to accompany the lady as well as the word courage (my word for the year), and the lion I choose was the Venetian one painted by Jacobello del Fiore (approx. 1400 - 1439). I knew I had the postcard (bought in Venice in 1978!) and after a bit of a search it duly surfaced. It's the Leone di S. Marco.

And here it is added to the mix. 

I will also use the top image for my blip today. My 1500th blip to be precise. For all my previous blip anniversaries I have been going out specially to see if I can find something special to photograph. But today I simply wasn't in the mood to put myself out on behalf of getting a blip. The whole Blipfoto situation has been getting me down too much and in any case the weather is dismal. Very windy (and it's meant to be getting worse by the end of the week) as well as wet. So I'm going the spend the rest of the day in the studio!