After Frida

I'm not all that happy with this piece. . . though I still very much like the concept behind it.  It is the second project for self-as-subject, which was to create a "psychological self-portrait."  Having just seen the Frida Kahlo show at SF MOMA, I thought of doing this piece that I've had in mind for a while now.  This is my own personal version of "The Two Fridas."  It didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, though.  I tried to do a gel transfer with semi-matte golden's gel medium and an image printed on avery transparency.  I haven't had luck with this in the past, and this was no exception.  I spread the gel over the canvas with my fingers, making a reasonably thick layer, then while it was still wet I layed the image on top.  I used a brayer to burnish the image into the medium, which wasn't very successful.  The transparency kept buckling and not making good contact with the medium.  Also, only a few layers of color transfered, leaving little detail and a bright teal image. . . not what I was going for.  I repeated the process to see if maybe I could get a more defined image through additional layers.  Not so much.  Finally, I printed the image on plain white paper, and did a medium transfer with that.  Letting the medium dry, and then getting the paper backing wet to peel it off.  This still didn't yield an image with that much detail.  My solution was to then draw in the figures with sharpee.  I actually liked how that looked, but still wished the photo would've been more evident.  I painted the background to extend the photograph with acrylics, adding the clouds and heart, which are also in Kahlo's piece, and add a more surreal effect.