Friday 17 February 2017

The Making of the Pefect Mental Patient

It's been a stepwise progression - always has - and with each step the outside world seems to have become further away.  Toilet use, but with the door left open: the use of a comode by the bed: bedpan use, with the curtains drawn around the bed: bedpan use with the nurse hovering close by: bedpan use under close scrutiny... She's done her best to preserve her independence throughout of course - and suffered for it.  She's tried to run away ('absconding', they call it).  And now this!  

The choice is stark: She can use the toilet - under strict close supervision of course - and accept six with the plaited riding crop - or succumb to the cooing encouraging voice of the therapist and let the woman lead her lovingly deeper into institutional care, one step nearer to the straight jacket...

Thursday 9 February 2017

Straight Back Home After the Dentist

STRAIGHT HOME AFTER THE DENTIST - A taster from a collection of ‘new’ Benson’s  - and new ‘takes’ on old Bensons  - based on work done for the great man by garth Toyntanen and Angela Fox

Yes, the girl's court appointed legal guardian's orthodentic friend has worked her usual magic - there's nothing like it when it comes to the task of begining to bring a headstrong, previously pampered and indulged image-consious young thing down a peg or three!

I bet you've no IDEA how long I struggled to get those teeth braces in reflection - and I bet if I hadn't eluded to 'em in the text nobody would have even noticed!

Thoughts anyone?

Wednesday 1 February 2017

After Many Months - As Promised. I'm Back


Hi folks - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!  Yep, it's been THAT long - longer in fact; I only realised a week or two back that I'd last posted here way back on October 27th LAST YEAR, so I guess I need to add a much-belated MERRY CHRISTMAS (Happy Holidays, for you US of A orientated types).  And I trust you all DID have a merry Christmas and are enjoying a happy new year thus far and hope 2017 continues to to bring all you might hope for.

We all like to set new goals for the new year, and among mine is the determination to get all five of the projects I have on the go at the moment (and for the last couple of years in the case of four of them) finished, edited and 'out there' in some form or other.  Another goal I have - as I have fairly recently declared within the comments section of my last, October 27th offering - is to update this blog at least once per week minimum but generally twice as from February 1st (as declared in that comment I posted). 

Well February 1st was yesterday - and I very nearly fell at the first fence as it were.  I'd decided I wanted to do something specifically and especially for this 'comeback' post. I'd also decided it was time to finish off my white coated doctor / psychotherapist figure (which the observant among you will remember I unveiled a while back (last year of course) but minus the white coat and which was criticised by some for possessing a somewhat distorted head).  But when it came down to the nitty-gritty it ended up taking a whole lot longer than I'd allowed for, mainly when I got down to the stage of providing the think bubble and annotation and so on. 

In the final book form I plan to use illustrations such as these with the captions outside the image itself and with the only text (other than perhaps for the title in some cases) being kept within 'speech' or 'think' bubbles or within a single small block within quotation marks and limited to a few words only, since otherwise where text is allowed to get too dense (as it is in the version below) it tends to get too small for easy reading on a hand-held device, say.

In this case I wanted to provide something of the taste of the storyline within the image itself because I wanted it to be able to hold up and be intelligible when also posted to such platforms as Tumblr and Pinterest, where there is not the space to write the story around the image and from where other bloggers and 'Pinteresterists' often like to 'reblog' or 'repin' to their own favourite platforms which would of course result in the story caption being left behind.  In the end. as I said, it ended up using up all the time I had available (I had to rush to take one of my kids to dance class) but rather than COMPLETELY collapse at the first hurdle I decided to limp over it and just stumble a bit and quickly post up the two versions I present here and write up the rest of the post later (ie, today).

I'd be grateful for any comments you might have - good OR bad. I'll tell you more of this year's aims and what to expect and look forward to next time (which MIGHT be as early as tomorrow - Friday - but most likely will be Tuesday next week, by which time I might also have another pic for your critical evaluation and, hopefully, delight) and also elucidate the details of the different projects I am involved in (and also the pressures which have delayed things recently).  Bye for now!  Have a good one!

Thursday 27 October 2016

Institutuional Discipline...

...But what KIND of institution?  You decide!

Hi folks.  Every now and then somebody sends me a picture or piece of writing which inspires me and demands to be adapted and perhaps extended in some way.  It might be something entirely innocent but which nevertheless can be interpreted - or be able to be interpreted - in an entirely different way.  And such was the case with the image I received in my email yesterday (many thanks for that, Robin!).  As always we must assume all are of marriageable age (I hate that term, but one has to use it, as I often do in my discipline / corporal punishment / spanking writing, to avoid the unwanted attentions of Plod).  Click to enlarge (obviously)

Now changing the colour of an object or item of clothing, say - which was the original request in this case; changing the colour of the gymslips from navy blue to bottle green - is usually the easy bit. Although yesterday's thing turned out to suffer all manner of complications, because of all those bright highlights and deep shadowing.  And the are limits. 

For example, when I took it a stage further for my own amusement, added a nurse figure (which you'll have seen before) and rearranged things, although I was happy enough initially I then decided I wanted to make the nurse's dress navy blue.  But try as I may I couldn't get it the blessed thing dark enough without all manner of defects becoming visible.  The dress was originally a sort of light sea green and the image came from a catalogue which I scanned a good few years back. The colour change was partly to disguise the source - I have navy blue versions I could have used directly.  I suspect the defects which become visible are likely artifacts from the scanning process, some kind of aliasing caused by moire patterning due to an interaction between the scanning and the fine detail in the fabric itself. 

I am not sure why exactly why - something you might like to discuss perhaps - but I would definitely have preferred navy blue if I had been able to achieve it. I would like her to look a little older too, but still attractive (that seems to be important, too). That's not the model's original face of course.  It's an amalgam of three different faces and hair using features of each.  And the cap has been changed too. It originally had a straight flat top.  One approach I could have tried - and has worked in the past - is to desaturate the image to black and white monochrome first, and then colourise it.  I might give that a try at some point, but for now it's back to the writing.  

I have discovered a really cheap but quiet and well kept pub down the road a ways in Tottenham.  Called 'The Elbow Room', one can get a pint of fine hand-pulled real ale there for a thoroughly reasonable £2.10 (£1.95 on Tuesdays).  AND they have a loyalty car
d scheme: buy 6 pints and get the next FREE!!!  So that's where I'm off to in a mo, to sit and write on my trusty laptop.  See Y'all!

Friday 14 October 2016

Of Disappearing Blogs - And a Bit of Photo Art to Keep You Amused

Another blog has disappeared - back up your blog content now, lest yours is next! Yep! I just discovered Alec Leamus's blog - Beyond The Magic Box - (beyondthemagicbox.blogspot.com) has been removed!!!  Another one bites the dust.  For myself: A while back I backed up a lot of this blog to a Word Press blog of the same name, although I have to admit I'm not up to date with my backups - but on the other hand I haven't been posting to this blog as frequently as I once did because it is somewhat more time consuming compared to posting on Tumblr or Pinterest, say... Oh well. fingers crossed! 
Another day in the Dept. of Applied Experimental Behavioural Psychology's Secure Residential Unit
The dress is originaly from a 1960s women's workwear catalogue - the woman's face is another of my composit constructions, which I think (I hope) I'm slowly getting better at.  The figure was originaly holding a pair of glasses which overlaped the dress and so I had to do a bit of reconstruction work, which to be honest hasn't quite come off as well as I would have hoped  - perhaps I'll have another crack at some future date (the hand holding the mug and cane needs a re-think too; it creates the illusion of too many fingers as it is at present)... Ok, so I've had another shot at getting that hand right (or at least improving it) - see below (scroll down).

The background and the coloured area on the mug she is holding were originaly a different colour.  The badge I have tried to make look as if embroidered on the dress itself rather than a pin-on type of thing.  It doesn't really fit in with my novels since it is more like the kind of thing which I describe as being worn in the workroom / sweatshop in which my heroine is put to work, but it just caught my imagination for some reason.

Tuesday 11 October 2016

That Nurse Helena Traslation / Interpretation Project - The Next Instalment



This is the last three of the set I have.  If you have the rest of this set (assuming it exists some place) please let me know, or better still send it to me via email (toyntanen@googlemail.com).  I reiterate - I’m not a French speaker (only JUST manage English - on a GOOD day!) I’ve just done my best using Google translate and a bit of thought.  It would have been somewhat darker had it been one of my storylines!  The French language originals are below.




Friday 7 October 2016

An Amazing Nurse Helena Annotated Photoset - And an Attempted English Translation / Interpretation

 Hi Folks!  A while ago a kind soul sent me a set of six annotated photoset pages originating from the excellent and always innovative Nurse Helena (thanks again Candii).  Originally in French, I've had a shot at translating and re-annotating them in English.  Thus far I have completed the first three of the set of six, which I present here, first the three French Language originals and then - if you scroll further down the page - my three translations / interpretations.

 I have to admit don't speak French, so I have had to rely on on-line language translation programmes which sometimes fail to provide a direct translation which makes any sense, and thus here and there I have had to make a semi-educated guess to come up with my own interpretation, but I think the gist and the spirit of the thing survives.  Please let me know what you think...


I hope to complete the final three next week, probably next Tuesday, which will likely be my next opportunity to get back on my main, desktop computer.  I'll be away from home for the weekend but will have my smart phone with me and so can answer emails and comments and so on.  Bye for now and best wishes.  Garth