I touched up Mona Lisa...

(Updated on 18/6/12 due to further changes that I made - I just couldn't resist!)

In this digital age, it's hard to imagine there are many pictures that are not treated to a Photoshop make over, it's just the done thing. Whether it's just to light it up slightly, or the full blown celebrity airbrushing treatment, images are rarely straight from camera to print and this got me thinking. When did this start becoming acceptable? What would the art world be like if it had always happened? What if, Leonardo Da Vinci upon completing Mona Lisa said "That'll do for now, I'll give it a once over in Paintshop later".

So with the technology at my fingertips I thought I'd give it go and treat the Mona Lisa as if it was Photo that I was asked to ready for press. Bare in mind I didn't want to change the image, just enhance it. The golden rule of Photoshop is that it shouldn't look Photoshoped.

It took much longer than I expected - almost six weeks in fact. The main reason being, I kept having to walk away from it when I noticed I was taking things too far, subtlety had to be the key. Despite making a couple of major changes I am quite pleased with the end result, I'm pretty sure over the next 6 weeks I'll be coming back to it and making even more changes, but for now I am happy and I hope you like it too :)

Above shows the before and after. Bringing out the colours in the background really helped to add depth, whilst changing her hair and eye colour seemed to give the picture more life - feel free to comment

Thanks for stopping by!