PictureBook – ‘Vanity Demands Grub’ – By Benamon Tame

© Benamon Tame – ‘Vanity Demands. Grub’

Two moths chased each other around the shaft of dirty light, their bodies filled with a small and simple joy, warm and sheltered from the harsh outside.

The picture moves back, and their movement is reflected in the eyes of a doll, one eye larger than the other and a head perched atop a pair of legs. A small top hat, barely larger than a thimble. A curious flourish for such a fine figure.

Grub shuffled forward, one eye darting in its socket as it followed the small flights, the other languid as it took in all that was before it. His toes stopped at the edge of the light and he waited as the moths glided closer.

Tiny feet up his face and the moths alighted, curious as to the faintest sound of others like themselves. Grub split his porcelain lips and the sound of beating wings slipped out. The moths approached and with a snap like a broken plate, Grub closed his mouth and the moths were gone.

Grub gave a dusty smile and felt the beat of wing and body behind his eyes. A full head, and he was ready to see Muse and make her powdered and pretty again.

As he walked away one leg twitched as the moths bounced around inside and knocked strange places.

Grub looked a bit odd even before I got to him. He was a doll at my daughter’s nursery and he caught my eye as one of his eyes didn’t work very well and I had started looking around for old dolls to adapt. (I have since moved to Ebay to gather old bits and broken dolls).

Taking away his body and arms gave him a more comical appearance, as if he had the other parts taken off of him, though he was just as likely to have given them away in return for a smile.

© Benamon Tame – ‘Vanity Demands. Typewriter remix’

Grub is a follower; the one who is eager to please, the one who does not belong but by being subservient and useful he has made a place for himself. Under the rule of Loki he earned his hat as court jester and now he spends his time running errands for others.

But it is to Muse he is most devoted. He watched her from afar and now she has fallen from grace he looks after her and allows her the illusion of her old status even though he would not have been part of it. As a special treat for her he catches moths and butterflies and uses them as powder and makeup. He also likes the flutter in his head when he catches them.

Quite often I will create a remix of a piece, these are usually reworked images that do not conform to the rules of the series or are a bit more abstract. With this series I created the Typewriter remixes for use with a calendar and I also might use them as a printed card series. I created the remix below while writing this and wanted to portray Grub hunting. This became him watching moths from outside through a window…

I started with the image of grub and opened it in BlurFX added a Gaussian blur with it down to about 30% to give it that out of focus look.

I then opened the new image in Snapseed using Grunge. For this part of the edit all i want is the texture so I use the controls to match the filter as much as I can to the original and then add the frost texture.

I then worked on the frosted image using blender to add the moths. I could use Juxtaposer for this but for this image I wanted the option of gradated blending of the layers. I selected an image of a moth from my stock image folder and removed the excess image before moving around to fit.

With Juxtaposer I could have saved the trimmed moth as a stamp but I can get around that by saving the image and when it asks if you want a clean project press no. This will allow you to replace the left image with the most recent save and you can now move the moth to a new location and repeat as often as you like.

I then opened the image again in Snapseed to make some final adjustments.

© Benamon Tame – ‘Vanity Demands. Moths against the glass remix’

The Apps used were Juxtaposer, Iris Photo Suite, Snapseed, Blender and PictureShow. Lo-Mob, Labelbox and Phonto were used in addition for the Typewriter remix. BlurFX was used in addition in the Moths against the glass remix.