This just a jumble of images - a sort of collage - at the moment; and ALL of it needs more work. In particular the shortcomings with my isolation of Roger Benson's woman figure (originally holding a hair brush but now equipped with a wickedly pliable looking punishment cane) - but also the girl figure once removed from her grey shading layer - are made more apparent once backgrounded by the nurse's uniform dress and now I realise there is still a fringe of her original shaded background here and there, which is irritating.
So this is all a bit experimental and if you click on the image and check out the file name you'll spot the word 'socks' in there which is how this started out, by my playing around and considering putting socks on the girl. But I also wanted to play around a bit more with acquiring a halfway decent colour pic of the so-called 'National' nurses' uniform dress of the 1970s, which I have a personal love affair with and which was the inspiration behind by trying to apply that particular check pattern and that particular shade of blue (which I still haven't got right) to Mr Benson's wonderfully drawn 1950s / late 60s woman.
The thing is that there seems to be a number of fairly high quality B&W photographs around but none to speak of in full colour (I have myself scanned a couple of colour pics in from an old Alexandra Workwear catalogue in the past but they were not very large and didn't scan very well - I seem to remember an even older edition had a full page colour pic but I don't have that one). So basically I have found myself attempting to colourise the best monochrome pic I colour find - and trying to get that bloody shade of blue right; and trying to get the belt right too, which in my mind ought to be white, and is VERY important for some reason which I cant quite put my finger on.
Much effort on my part was also expended on creating the spoon and medication, which is intended for another image. In my mind our young heroine has just had an absolutely agonising and will-sapping caning for refusing her medication. Now I now of at least a few visitors here who much prefer to think of such discipline taking in the domestic environment, to whom I would say that for my part I don't think the presence of a young woman in a nurse's uniform dress definitely marks out the scenario as necessarily institutional. Actually I am quite enamoured with the idea of some part of the home having been set aside in some way, isolated from the rest and furnished with all the paraphernalia required to keep a headstrong young lady under control.
As for the stockings: I quite agree their presence is anything like perfect. On the other hand, I am not at all sure socks would be right either (white or otherwise). Surely bare feet are the order of the day? But have you considered (particularly in the the institutional environment) that on occasion she might be required to wear girdle, stockings and 'heels' for a short while (perhaps while undergoing one-to-one psychological appraisal and counselling) as a sort of cruel reminder of the 'normal' world outside the secure high-walled confines of the care home she has found herself detained in and which she is no longer part of and of her old life?
Views anyone? For example: Pyjamas with a PVC or latex tabbard worn over the top - perhaps labelled with a 'diagnosis' designed to influence the way people treat her? Pyjamas alone? Or a one piece dress type of thing such as seen on the girl here? Or something entirely different? And does it matter whether she is confined at home in some way or institutionalised somewhere nice and isolated?
You'll have to wait a little to see your words in print - not my fault; it is the fault of those who would plant there spam here - but I'll get 'em up and also responded too ASAP. The trouble is that when I am out and about - as I will be in a moment or two (going down the pub - The Tollgate anyone?) I am at the mercy of the WiFi providers and nowadays blogs and websites such as this one of mine are often blocked. Bye for now!
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2 comments:
Surely the appropriate dress for a young woman undergoing corrective training would be a pair of those regulation school pyjamas that giels were required to wear at boarding school in the past. The striped variety, buttoned up to the collar, are particularly humiliating and rather degrading.
Hi there Anonymous! Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I used to visit the blog that was called something like 'The Girl In The Striped Pyjamas' where there was a serialised story going on and there were some good ideas there, although the story sort of petered out after a while and I'm not sure if anything new has been published there for some time. I do like the idea of the style you speak of, albeit with certain modifications and changes to styling to make more suitable for sort of institutional care I have been thinking of. And there can be little doubt, I think, that for a lively outgoing girl to be confined to that mode of dress - and nothing else - all day every day and day after day after day would have a most salutary effect. And this would be especially the case if there should be something about the outfit which even further sets her apart from the would at large – and of course such an approach is just as adaptable to the domestic environment (under the right circumstances) as to the secure institution.
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