Butterflies for Freedom

(For Piet Scholten and Rene La Fleur)

My Flickr friend, Martine ( meidvrouwstuk ) asked if I could make a graphic with a butterfly theme. She said each of her family members all have a picture in their house of a butterfly, in memory of the butterflies that her grandfather, Piet Scholten and his friend, Rene La Fleur used to paint on the walls of the barrack in the work camp where they were held during WW2.

Piet never likes to talk about the war and the terrible things that happened there. It is still too painful for him. He was taken away form his family. He didn’t know if his wife and child could survive without him and so he went through hell.

The only light during that time was his friend, Rene La Fleur. Piet was sent to a work camp, in Norway, which was at that time occupied by the Germans. Rene gave Piet the nickname, Monsieur Pierre. Rene had no shoes so Piet gave him an extra pair that he had. More than 100 men lived and slept together in one large barrack. Rene and Piet would paint butterflies on the walls of the barracks, which to them represented their yearning for freedom. They were given food only once per day, a bowl of soup, so the men were always hungry.

When the war finally ended, the work camps were shut down and the men were allowed to return to their respective countries. Rene returned to Rouan, France where his family had a hotel. When they were departing, Rene kept waving and shouting, “Au revoir Monsieur Pierre!!!!” Piet told Martine he still hears this sound in his head. When he returned home, he didn’t recognize his own child.

Piet is now 87 years old. He never again heard from his friend Rene La Fleur. This graphic is in honour of their deep friendship, and of the butterflies on whose wings hope for freedom was kept alive during the war. The graphic features Danielle, Martine's lovely daughter. If you look very carefully, hidden within the trees are the images of Martine's grandfather and grandmother when they were about 20 years old. You might have to view at the large size to see these details. Martine sent me several images of Danielle, but in the end I pieced together several features from various photos. ie: if the foot was in a nice position in one, I used that foot, the hand from another, the face from another, the skirt is a combination of skirts from more than one shot.

I have just uploaded a little 'tutorial' onto my main website, showing how I pieced together about 6 different images of Danielle in order to get the position you see above. I've also described how I've made her wings. I've included the original photos of Piet Scholten and Martine's grandmother. Here is the link:
[link]

Here is a link to Martine's photo stream:
www.flickr.com/photos/martinevandoorn/

p.s. I'll tell you a little secret .......... the "ivy" strands are made by taking a single butterfly wing pattern, repeating it, turning its hue to green and using Blending Modes such as "Hard Light" and "Screen" to superimpose it over the trees. The pattern is then pieced into the shape of "ivy" strings. I did this in order to "infuse" the "essence of butterfly" throughout the entire graphic piece. I often like to do things like this when making a graphic. It is like putting a special magic "spice" into the recipe, to make the flavour very very sweet. :-D

Background trees from Stock.Xchng: [link]