Becoming Real

I love this truck! It's in my neighborhood, in an alley. The colors are great and the lines. It just has so much personality and soul- I love everything about it- the plants growing all around it, the way it is integrating into the landscape and slowly decaying. I love the broken window and the old withered sunflower in the front grill. I finally went out early one morning with the intention of photographing it. Here it is in it's true glory with no photo enhancement, just nice morning light.

I come back to play with this truck image again and again. I'm photographing new stuff all the time but I just haven't found anything I like as much as this.  Some of the things I've done to this truck include: saturate the color heck out of it, add flowers, add animals, run it through all sorts of painting apps, collage it into other pieces. In this one I put it through the detangle app. Love detangle:

This picture is almost believable:

This one is probably not so believable:

 Look closely at this one- I put my cat in the driver's seat and my two crows from my recent wall painting on the hood and fender.

Here it is collaged into my Artist Journey piece:

Shiny new stuff doesn't seem to hold much appeal to me. The soul and realness happens with a patina of age. Hopefully that is true with me as well. I love this quote from The Velveteen Rabbit, a children's book.

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit


I do have a new photo image I like almost but not quite as much as the truck. It's an old house. Kind of haunted looking and falling apart. But all sorts of soul.