Women Love Diamonds Episode 3

It has been a while since we posted any updates about the massive restoration project that is the Women Love Diamonds poster. So, a quick recap: Last summer the poster was literally in pieces and missing a very large chunk right in the middle.

John and Madalyn went through multiple steps to get the poster linen backed and then prepped so restoration could begin. (All of which you can read in detail in Part 1 and Part 2.)

The main issue we encountered with this poster, besides the fact that it was originally in shreds, was that as far as we can tell it is a one of a kind poster and thus no reference exists for us to base our restoration off of. This is just the kind of challenge that we love at Poster Mountain! Ravi, Gabe and John had a quick consultation and decided to base the restoration of our leading lady's dress off of stills from the movie and other dresses from that time period.

Before restoration. 

At the end of Episode 2, Ravi had gotten a basic outline of  our leading lady Pauline Starke's body. The next step was to begin to give the dress shape. 

In order to get the dress just right and to connect the top half to the lower portion, Ravi drew a simple sketch of Starke's form. 

Ravi spent a lot of time looking at stills from this silent movie, although most of them were of Starke sitting down, so he had to get creative with how the dress probably looked.

I promise, Ravi really is working here not just surfing the net. 

Once Ravi had a good idea of what the dress may have looked like, it was time to get to work and connect the upper half to the lower train of the dress.

"Don't mind me, Ravi, I'm just lurking and watching you draw so I can take photos."

Preliminary drawing done!

This was one of the most incredible transformations to watch. Ravi worked on it when he had a free hour or two in between other projects and every time I looked up or went over to take a photo he had added more detail.

Here the background is masked off to protect it from the airbrushing that Ravi used to put in base coats of color.

After he had the outline of all the lines of the dress, Ravi masked off the rest of the poster and began to airbrush in a base coat. This color blended in with the original color of the dress and softened the lines of his pencil drawing, allowing him to add in more layers of color and pigment that would recreate the look of the original poster. 

Here is a close up of the preliminary sketch and the first round of airbrushing.

Base coat of color is in!

I had hoped to finish up Women Love Diamonds this week, but the post was just too long! So we'll have one last update next week! 

Certain proprietary steps and procedures have been omitted. If you have any comments or ideas for things you would like to see us cover on our blog, please let us know! Additional questions regarding other work or your pieces, please contact us via email at postermount@aol.com or by phone 818.882.1214.

Also, check out our websites: http://www.postermountain.com and http://www.lapapergroup.com. Please feel free to leave comments or questions on the blog. For dail photos and updates check out Poser Mountain's Twitter and Instragra: follus us on Twitter @postermount and postermountain on Instragram. Our subsidiary company, LA Paper Group will be showcasing the fine art side of the company: @LAPaperGroup on Twitter and LAPaperGroup on Instagram.