Barefoot Mommas' Club revisited

Two months ago, I redid a photo of Kay Robertson of the A&E series Duck Dynasty and her fellow members of a "muffins for mom" social club into a supersized version of my Barefoot Mommas Club, as seen below.

However, upon closer inspection, there was a significant problem: The photo was slanted at an angle above ground level, and was blurry.  Even though I cloned the source picture, it could have looked a whole lot better.

Then I stumbled on a solution: On my way back from a recent visit to a local optometrist, I walked to a library that is part of the Los Angeles County system and checked out Miss Kay's Duck Commander Kitchen, the same book I used for the source.  This time, since I took it home, I could tear the picture on page 150 out, put it on a scanner I have at home, and save it to my hard drive so I can use it in Photoshop.  (Don't worry, I will reattach the page before I send it back to the library.:))

At that point, I did what I did before, assigning faces for my 24 characters and placing them on top of the bodies of the actual subjects.  The difference this time is that the resulting picture looks better since the background photo is closer in appearance to the original than the "picture of a picture" I took in a bookstore where the lighting was just too bright.

Here's how it looks now:

Hambone joins the 'ducky' Robertsons

This week, my task was a little easier: Make a commemorative photo montage of a recent "breaking of the fourth wall" in which my Hambone character "visits" the real-life Robertson family made famous on the A&E series Duck Dynasty.  (It's not the first such crossover; recently, I used a photo of Miss Kay and some of her friends to help expand the Barefoot Mommas Club.)  This would result in an episode in which Hambone visits the company headquarters (and even makes her own duck call with the infamous "blow me" phrase on the package, which Willie has her cross out before she leaves), takes a trip to one of the Robertsons' duck blinds and pretends to hunt even though it's out of season, and steals an ATV from Jase and almost flips it over.  At the end, she leads the end-of-show prayer, which no woman has actually done so far (usually Phil does it).

This shows Hambone as she's about to hunt, in a camouflage shirt and face paint on her, to make sure she doesn't blend in with the ducks.  The pose is based on a picture of "farm to table" chef Georgia Pellegrini, who often hunts for her food.  I took a selection of Pellegrini's body, set it aside, then placed and shaped Hambone's face and shirt so it would match the dimensions identically.  The clone-stamp tool was used to account for the differences.  The hat came from a picture posted at the Sportsman's Warehouse website, then re-sized and skewed the hat to fit on Hambone's head.

Part two: Huge retro 'photo' with five residents

Now, as promised, I present the biggest project I've ever done, in terms of how many elements it contains.

For quite some time, I have sought older photographs that were taken decades ago, to represent the history and heritage carried over to modern times by the Barefoot Family Farm.  About a week ago, as I updated an extended pedigree of the real-life descendants of Miles Barefoot and his son Miles "Pink" (who I have also adopted as the family patriarch of my 13 characters),  I came across a photo showing 36 people posing outside a building.  I found it on the Find A Grave page of Ida Barefoot, who was one of them.

I then got the idea to do two things: 1) Colorize the picture; 2) Somehow work some of "the 13" into my version.

Originally, I wanted to place some of their faces into the colorized version, but I eventually figured it would be better to present them as younger versions of themselves instead.  And since Popeye, his wife Annie, and their children Ralph, Harvey, and Hambone are the oldest residents in the collective sense, that's who I chose to be featured.

All the colorization took place using the "colorize" feature (of course) of the hue and saturation layer.  The thing is, it took over 50 such adjustments to get it to look how I wanted it.  The trickiest part was the skin color; if I did it wrong, some of them would have had overly-reddish skin and look more Native American than Caucasian.

After looking at the faces, I found the best portrayals of the quintet in their younger days.  Here, Alonzo and Annie are recently married and in their 20s; as for the kids, Ralph is 8 years old, Harvey is 6, and Reba Pearl is 3.

Here is the before:

Now, here is the after, with the family farm residents' names pointed out via caption:

Also of note in the "after" is that the person sitting down is Noah Gideon a/k/a "Gid", Popeye's father and the nearest direct relative to everyone at the Barefoot Family Farm (except for Bryson, who has a half-brother relationship through Brenda, who is the wife of one of Gid's grandsons). 

The setting of my new version is Unity Presbyterian Church, which was where most family members who lived in Meadow went until Long Branch Disciple Church on Barefoot Road became available; Ralph, of course, is now the minister at Long Branch.  Gid was the pastor at the time.  To Gid's left and at an angle slightly is his wife Velma, and on the ground to his immediate left is Noah, who went on to teach Belinda, Bryson, and others in the extended family's one-room schoolhouse on Meadowbrook Road.

Start of a big Photoshop weekend

With my return from spring break in Las Vegas (I did not have as wild of a time there as a lot of other people have, but I saw Blue Man Group at its third different Vegas location and was part of a piano bar party at New York-New York on the last night of my trip; sadly, Blondie [the make-believe one] didn't perform), I come back with the first of two posts this weekend dealing with personal Photoshop projects.

Up first is a new version of my Little Boy Records publicity poster.  This time I refer to Brittany Raylene by her "real" last name, to reflect how I feel about her in my heart.  Remember that I created the character due to my disillusionment with Britney Spears, the Louisiana country girl who strayed from her roots to become a provocative pop tart.  (Oh, by the way, Britney's got a Vegas connection too: a residency show at Planet Hollywood.)  This was more difficult than it looks: I had to isolate the original text from a static photo, erase the text, clone some of the "stars" back in, type "SPEARS," and resize it to match the original on a separate layer.  Fortunately, the same font I used to create the first version is also available in what I use at home.

A few weeks ago, I also dressed up Buddy Wayne as an Elvis impersonator.  I have stated that Elvis Presley is one of B.W.'s musical heroes, and this was his favorite Halloween costume as well.  The suit portion comes from a picture of a local impressionist in North Carolina I found in The Daily Record (Dunn, NC); I resized the head to match the proportion.

For my next post (hopefully late Saturday or early Sunday), I will present my biggest project ever - a colorized photo on a bucolic background with a whopping 35 people pictured.

Two of my characters bet on the Final Four

No picture montages for you this week, but I got a brainstorm this morning relating to the upcoming NCAA men's basketball Final Four, to start later today and continue Monday in Indianapolis.  In the first game, Michigan State will take on Duke at 6:09 p.m. Eastern time.  Forty minutes after the moment of conclusion will be game two between Wisconsin and Kentucky.  It's the latter game that has drawn the attention of the house.

Buddy Wayne is married to Brittany Raylene (Spears), a native of Beattyville, KY and by osmosis a huge fan of the Wildcats.  She hopes to attend the Final Four and sit next to, or at least near, the actress/superfan Ashley Judd.

In contrast, B.W.'s aunt Reba Pearl "Hambone" will be rooting for the Badgers.  Why?  The story goes back eight years, when Badgers head coach Bo Ryan did a hambone routine that was shown on ESPN during a game coming out of a commercial.  I would then have them perform together in July 2014 at a party following the "Big 10K," a series of 10- and 5-kilometer runs that promote the Big Ten Conference and Big Ten Network.  They would become each other's biggest fans and Ryan would offer Hambone tickets if UW made it back to the Final Four.  So I trust she would be at Lucas Oil Stadium as well, if she had also existed.

It has gone to the point where a bet has been made on tonight's game:

• If Kentucky wins, Hambone has to wear a replica of Brittany's wedding dress from the renewal of vows as shown at the end of season 2.
• If Wisconsin wins, B.W. has to learn a hambone routine and perform it in front of the entire house.

The wager results will be carried out on Monday morning just before the national championship game.  Good luck to all!

Playing dress-up with the Mommas again

The photo montage of five of the Barefoot Mommas Club members wearing Roman Originals dresses last week led me to another brainstorm, setting up this week's "picture."  It's also a bridge between my made-up "reality TV family" and an actual one.

Last fall, Sadie Robertson, part of the Duck Dynasty cast, made headlines for her second-place showing (with Mark Ballas) on the 19th season of Dancing with the Stars.  Robertson, the daughter of Duck Commander CEO Willie Robertson and the former Korie Howard, has also been concerned about the suggestive look of many prom dresses.  In 2013, she struck a deal with professional designer Sherri Hill for a new line of dresses called "Live Original"; these are billed as "daddy approved."  They debuted at the famous fashion week in New York City.

For this montage, I started with this picture taken in downtown Long Beach, CA.  I copied it from the teacher file of Nabawia Oliveira, teacher at ABC Adult School and founder of the ABC Film Festival.  I retained the fountain in the foreground and had Brandy, Annie, Brenda, and Jennifer stand in front of it.  One of the Sherri Hill dresses (found in this file) was made into four different ones, using hue/saturation and curves layers just as I adapted the Roman Original dresses before.  After that I posed them in roughly the circular pattern suggested by the fountain.  To match the heads with their faces, I used curves layers on the arms of the dresses.

The backdrop was replaced by these elements via separate layers:

• On the left is the "Pink House," the home of M. Vinson Barefoot that I chronicled in this post two years ago. (I gave the character one name, then renamed it, so the page title is unfortunately inconsistent.)  The house was originally white and came from a Brady Poirier teacher file; I used hue/saturation and curves to change the color.
• On the right is a continuation of the sky from the Pink House layer, and grass from two different sources.  Above the grass is a farm house and grain mill, which also came from Poirier.  I lightened it up with brightness/contrast.

More Mommas stuff as old meets trendy

Remember the furor earlier this month over a dress because, it seemed, the entire world argued over what color it was?  Although I chose not to participate myself, I did ask where the dress came from.  Well, someone I know on a forum connected to the sports media coverage website the506 (registration required) gave me not only a picture of a dress similar to the one that caused the uproar, but also named the company that made it: Roman Originals.  The company reports that sales have quadrupled since the picture was first placed on Twitter (but of course).

Once I saw "the dress," I sought a way to have the Barefoot Mommas' Club model it.  Well, here it is, with Elma, Jennifer, Brandy, Brenda, and Annie in front of the "bridge too far" creek.  The photo is straightforward, except that I had to use the warp tool in transform to make sure Elma was facing sideways based on the pose of her face.

As for the colors, there are no questions on any of them.  I started with the blue dress my fellow the506 member gave me, then changed the colors of the other four using two adjustments.  For all four of the non-blue dresses, hue and saturation was the basis of the color change; for the yellow and bright red, curves adjustments were also used.

Here it is as the old school moms pay tribute to what's hot online.