READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 [here]

So, originally the plan had been to do 8 separate art pieces for my wife for our anniversary (which was today), then combine them all into one big piece and print and frame it for her. Eight is still the eventual goal, but the number I could get done by the anniversary was three, and I printed and framed two pieces separately instead of combining them all.

The first piece I printed was the "We Are Ladies" homage to "Little Britain". It turned out very nicely.

The second piece was a new one which combined six public domain images from NASA with one of our wedding photos (the wedding photo is not public domain).

One of the ways my wife impressed me on our first date was that she knew many of the various forms Zeus had taken to seduce mortal women in Greek mythology. Meeting a woman as beautiful and smart as her who also was into Greek mythology... be still my heart... No, really. I've been a mythology buff since I was 9.

But that just turned out to be a symptom of her deep-rooted sci-fi geekery. She and I watch "Doctor Who" and "Heroes" together (and "Eureka" and "The 4400" and "Torchwood"), plus we bring home sci-fi books and trade them. Part of our anniversary celebration the last two years (last year and this year) is to just go geek out at a book store.

So sometimes I call her "my sci-fi bride," and that was the theme I decided to use for the art piece.

The landscape at the bottom is a detail from a Mars Rover image from within Victoria crater, chopped off at the skyline. The background is a detail from a larger photo of a stellar spire in the Eagle Nebula. The planet in the upper left is Venus, radar imaged and color coded for elevation. The woman is, of course, my wife. And the space craft range from a space tug to a satellite to the ISS.

I framed it with a gold colored wood frame, with the gold really picking up colors from Venus nicely, and it's now hanging in our upstairs hallway. She liked it very much.

Her art project for me... The Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It was TOO cool.

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 [here]

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 [here] | Part 3

In part 1 of this series, I introduced the project: create eight works of collage art to be incorporated into a larger art piece as a 5th anniversary gift for my wife... using public domain art from various online sources.

This second piece relates to the fact that after much harrassment, nagging, begging, pleading... this year I finally quit smoking and stuck to it. I'd quit before for a few days, a few weeks, once for 3 months, but I've been off the devil weed for 6.5 months so far.

But even 6+ months later, the "habit" still gives me twinges. I still want a cigarette and get the urge for one most days. It's just that the urge isn't accompanied by a desire to kill fluffy bunnies and use their carcasses to beat teddy bears to death if I don't get one... anymore. The first couple of days of quitting... kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!

This piece contains 4 distinct images. From left to right, the first and third images were extracted from old theatrical posters found at the Library of Congress. The second image from the left is the "butthead" from an anti-smoking campaign by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and was found by searching FirstGov.gov for "cigarettes", though using the term "butthead" is more efficient if you want this particular image.

Those three images were fairly simple jobs of cropping out the background, but the last image from the left took a bit more work. It is a photograph from the Library of Congress of a young woman lighting a cigarette. She's posed by a window and heavily backlit, creating an almost silhouette effect. In addition to cropping the woman out from the photo, I adjusted the levels to make the photo more silhouetted with small areas of lightness, then used an outer glow layer effect to give it an outline that could stand out against the background.

I originally planned to do a background using photos of cigarettes, but ended up deciding on the simple two-tone background you see here. With four images and text, I felt the image was busy enough without adding another image as a background.

If I keep up this pace, I'd be done by New Year's Day. But I've got three months to finish this, there are important projects in the wings, and Christmas is over. So look for installment 3 in January.

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 [here] | Part 3

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 [here] | Part 2 | Part 3

My wife is very into scrapbook, collage kind of art, where they use rubber stamps, photos, and all sorts of other "ephemera" to create pieces of art. Each anniversary, she's created me an interesting piece of art.

I have a Zazzle shop and found out that they offer poster printing on art-quality papers and canvas. So with our fifth anniversary approaching, I figured I'd create a piece of art for her and print it on canvas.

I created an arrangement of staggered frames, and in 8 of them, I'll create a frame that has some sort of significance regarding something in our relationship. Additionally, I'm using entirely public domain art and photography, using resources like the Library of Congress, Open Clip Art Library, FirstGov.gov, and Wikimedia Commons to help me find the pieces I need.

The first piece... My wife and I have long been fans of "Little Britain", a comedy show out of, well, Britain. As I was browsing some antique photos, I happened upon this photo of a "bearded lady", which immediately put me in mind of the characters of Emily and Florence, two entirely unconvincing transvestites who constantly say "we are ladies".

Pairing it with a theatrical poster, also from the Library of Congress collection, I came up with the following frame to symbolize our shared love of "Little Britain".

Frame 1 of 8 done and down. Seven more to go. Thanks to Matt Lucas and David Walliams of "Little Britain" for the laughs and the inspiration.

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 [here] | Part 2 | Part 3