This was a practical exercise in speeding-up my Photoshop skills whilst defacing the most parodied work of classical art in the world with a British-spin.

The aim of a parody is to retain a minimal amount of original content necessary to enable the viewer to create an intended relationship between the original and new material. With this and practicality/time constraints in mind, this image of Lisa Gherardini in noughties Britain is more concatenation than alteration. I learned that introducing foreign objects is an incredibly efficient method of modification as far as labour-intensity is concerned.

The two most difficult parts were transforming Mona Lisa’s right hand and finding appropriate samples of foreign objects to introduce naturally into the painting.

I had some other ideas to continue the appearance of a Chav teen girl from a British council estate. These included introducing more brazenly-coloured clothing, more prominent tracksuit adornments, additional jewelery, bottles of alcopops, and more. Nevertheless I feel I found a sweet spot in terms of image intensity and message delivery.

Total tool time: around 3 hours.