Whistler's Onion

Day 243: In pursuit of a photo project featuring 100 possibilities for an onion, I seem to be abusing the heck out of the Old Masters, but oh, it's fun! This, of course, is a riff on James Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1," colloquially known as "Whistler's Mother." While neither my take on it nor Whistler's original was done entirely in grey and black, the muted tones give a monochromatic sense to the work overall.

With limited space, I was unable to exactly duplicate the scene as shown in the painting. As it was, I had to move several large pieces of furniture and remove a 6 x 9 rug from my bedroom in order to have a blank wall behind me. The window stood in for one of the two frames in Whistler's work, although the second one in my image had to be hung lower in order to get it into the shot. The dark "curtain" is a length of handwoven fabric and was not wide enough to entirely cover the left portion of the image, and regrettably, I did not have a voluminous black skirt to spread out gracefully around the chair legs. Two doilies make up my cap, and another serves as my lace jabot. The frame surrounding the textured photo is from PaintShopPro, tweaked until it was more suitable for the tonal range of the image.