Using Vintage Photography in Mobile Art

Larceny

I have an obsession with looking through old mug shots. It's weird, I know, but over at Flickr Commons you can browse through vintage mug shots that were taken over in Europe and I have wasted plenty of time doing just that. Many of the mug shots come along with the story behind the person's arrest. I love reading the circumstances behind these mugshots. I noticed that many of the crimes had to do with larceny, theft of personal property. Many of the stories indicated that the perpetrator was either trying to steal to feed their family or themselves. I found myself feeling sorry for them. Many were orphans with no source of income. They just ran the streets and tried to get food when they could. So tragic and sad.

Anyway, I was inspired to create this digital collage art piece after browsing those images. I took 4 mugshots of 4 boys who were accused of larceny (thus, the title of this piece) and used various parts of the 4 faces to create a collaged face of a young man in Photoshop CC. 

Then, I imported the above image into my iPhone 6S Plus and used 4 different apps including Snapseed, Distressed FX, Trigraphy, and Fragment to create the vision I had in my head for this piece. I ended up with the piece below.

I still wanted to add some moths to the background and add a triangle connecting the eyes and while I could have done this on my phone, I chose to import it back onto my computer and use Photoshop CC to do this. I added the vintage moth texture and then drew in the triangle, finishing the piece.

I hope you liked this glimpse into artistic process! Have a wonderful day.

xo