I’ve been trying to expand the gallery a little, but have run into a snag. For those who don’t know, I’ve gotten into doing photo manipulation lately, where (often numerous) photos are combined along with artwork into a new picture. So far, I’ve done the Agnes and Jonas, the Louis-Cesare, the Louis-Cesare and Dory, and the Consul images in the gallery. The others were done by a professional, as if you couldn’t tell!
But I’ve been having fun anyway, or at least I was until I decided to try to do Ming-De. She plays an important part in the next Dory book, so I wanted to include her, but damn if finding stock images for Chinese models in traditional dress isn’t difficult. All the stock galleries seem to cater to European interests. Need something from the European Middle Ages? They’ve got you covered. Need something from T’ang Dynasty China? *crickets* Or, worse, they’ll have a European model made up to look Chinese, which no, just no.
So I began to wonder . . . is there a dearth of Chinese models out there? Or does nobody make Han or T’ang or Ming clothing anymore? But on the contrary, it turns out that there’s a recent upswing in the manufacture of traditional clothing in China, which people are starting to wear for weddings or photo shoots or just for fun. It’s called Hanfu, which technically refers to the Han Dynasty, but has come to be a sort of catch-all term for any traditional Chinese outfits. And the best examples are simply beautiful.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a stock gallery that has decent Hanfu images for me to play with. On the other hand, I’ve come across some gorgeous Hanfu I just had to share. I love fashion, as you could probably tell from the books, and Chinese traditional fashion is just gorgeous. In case there’s anybody out there who agrees with me, here are some of the best “Ming-de’s” I’ve come across out of the Hanfu craze.
And my personal favorite:
I don’t think I can do better than this for Ming-De. But if I ever manage something, it’ll be up for your perusal. In the meantime, back to work on Masks!
