I saw some black and white photographic work of Dominic Rouse, in which he somehow created disturbing surreal images working directly with negatives. His images had a very dark, possibly gothic, look. I decided to try for a similarly dark look in Photoshop. Without photos of old house, church, and castle interiors, I used a shot of our stairway and added old doors and windows (some clip art and some of my own). The first time through I worked in black and white, but found that too intimidating so I started over in color. Overall, I would call this more creepy than disturbing but I couldn't leave it alone. The tatooes were made with brushes from Obsidian Dawn, the spiders from In Obscuro, and the other grunge was done with brushes from Vered. Until I added the grunge, I almost couldn't look at this; that made it even more difficult to work on!

If I continue to work with this size image and create a faux tarot (there are so many ways to play with the word tarot) deck, this one will definitely represent wasting time on a major scale.