Working with AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create images feels a bit like being buffeted by wind and waves. It is impossible to control and you don’t always end up where you want to be. I found that out during my first attempt to make a realistic image of Hitty as a young lady in “Faces of Hitty.”
After doing that project, I had another idea… what if I could use AI to make a colorized version of one of Dorothy P. Lathrop’s black and white illustrations from the Hitty book? With World Doll Day approaching, I thought this project would be the perfect way to celebrate.
Since June is a traditional month for weddings, I decided to use the image of Hitty dressed as a bride. Here is Dorothy’s original black and white image of Hitty.
Illustration by Dorothy P. Lathrop
I signed up for DZine’s monthly subscription plan in order to have enough credits to make the images. It took many tries to get the right look, but I won’t bore you with all the failures. Here is the best result after 56 attempts, generated by DZine’s “Image-to-Image” tool.
The dress and background turned out great. What I didn’t like was the goofy expression on Hitty’s face. Also, the hairstyle wasn’t right. Take a closer look at her right hand… those added fingers are typical of the mistakes made by AI-generated images.
Although the final result wasn’t perfect, it was close. It occurred to me that I could use Photoshop to fix the things I didn’t like. Instead of the goofy face, I could use Flat Hitty’s face. And I could enhance a few other elements to make the perfect bridal portrait of Hitty.
Here is the finished image of Hitty dressed as a bride. You can right-click on the .jpg file if you want to save it. The image is free to use for personal and educational purposes. Although the majority of the image was generated using AI, the Flat Hitty face was created by me, in Photoshop. I also darkened her skin color and made improvements to the hands, pearls and roses. As you can see, AI can complement the work of an artist but not replace it completely. If I had created the entire image from scratch, it would have taken much longer to do.
Now I am excited to try making other images from the Hitty book. If you want to keep track of my progress, you can follow my Facebook and Instagram accounts, where I will post the results. Here is a colorized version of Flat Hitty in a bonnet.
Keep reading to learn more about Hitty dressed as a bride from the book, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years.
CHAPTER 14
In the book, Miss Hortense and Miss Annette Larraby were two old ladies who lived in a house in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The owner of Hitty at the time was Mr. Farley, a traveling portrait painter who used the doll only as a prop. Mr. Farley rented a room from the Larraby sisters when he went to New Orleans during the Carnival season.
“Miss Hortense was the older and handsomer of the two. She had been a beauty, her sister told Mr. Farley, and, indeed, her eyes were still very big and black, though without the shininess that they must once have had. The sisters must both have been great belles in their day. A large portrait of them painted when Miss Hortense was twenty and Miss Annette eighteen hung in the drawing-room, and I never tired of studying it. I found it hard to believe that the two wrinkled old ladies in their shabby silks could ever have been so young and pretty — Miss Hortense in canary-yellow brocade with her dark hair looped over her ears and her fingers strumming a guitar, while Miss Annette, in blue and sleek brown curls, leaned against her sister toying with a red rose.”
The two ladies asked to borrow Hitty for the upcoming Cotton Exposition. Also know as the World Cotton Centennial, it took place in New Orleans from 1884-1885. The ladies planned to sew Hitty a wedding dress made from an heirloom handkerchief, woven from cotton grown on their great-great-grandfather’s plantation.
“It had occurred to the two [Larraby sisters] that I might be dressed in the style of their own young days, which they insisted was much more graceful than any styles before or since, and be used as a model. They pointed out that I had a most unusual expression and that it would take only small bits of material to fit me out. They would dress me themselves and their friend and the committee would see that I was well placed and later returned in good condition. I felt quite overcome by the honor they proposed doing me and I could hardly wait to hear whether or not Mr. Farley would agree. Fortunately, he did. Indeed, he said it was an excellent idea, since he must leave for a month or more to paint portraits on several plantations.”
“Such measuring and planning and fitting as went on before scissors were put to the heirloom. The sisters pored over old fashion books and cut tiny paper patterns, so that I should do them credit and not a scrap of the precious piece be wasted. There were ruffled petticoats to be made first from other muslin, and these must have hems and feather-stitching so microscopic that even Miss Milly Pinch would have been forced to marvel. After much consultation, they decided to leave me my chemise, because they quoted an old motto that said every bride should wear “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” They washed and bleached it with their own hands, however, and wondered who put the cross-stitch letters on. They placed a French knot of blue on my inner waistband, and — as for something borrowed — Miss Hortense declared there was no need of going out of their way for this, since I myself was a borrowed contribution to the Exposition. So day after day they snipped and fitted and stitched in the dim parlors, with the cries from the street sounding very soft and faint behind their closed blinds.”
Hitty, dressed in all her wedding finery, made it to the Exposition where she was put on on display in a glass cabinet.
“I sat in the middle shelf of a glass cabinet, with exquisite examples of skilled needlework above and below me. I was complete, even to a miniature bouquet of white flowers in a lace-paper holder, and there was a card in front of the shelf that told how I had been dressed by the two sisters out of some of the finest cotton ever woven or worked.”
CHAPTER 15
Unfortunately, Hitty was stolen during the exhibit and was never returned to Mr. Farley. Such tragedies were a common occurrence with Hitty throughout her life. But of course, a doll has no control over her fate. Eventually, the location of Hitty was discovered, and an attempt was made to return her by Miss Hope, the daughter of a plantation owner.
“I must say it was pleasant being in Miss Hope’s bedroom even for the week or so it took to have my clothes washed and a letter written about me to New Orleans. Miss Hope personally removed my things and washed them with her own hands. She marveled over the perfection of the wedding handkerchief and almost wept that the damage to it was irreparable. The brown stains would not all come out and there were rents too jagged for even her skillful needle to darn.“
Miss Hope mailed the doll back to New Orleans, but the Larraby sisters did not have Mr. Farley’s address. Later, an old New York address for him was found. Hitty was mailed to New York, but after many attempts to find Mr. Farley failed, her box ended up in the dead-letter office. She eventually was sold along with other undelivered parcels — then traded — then left in a shop — then accidentally included with a delivery of clay pipes.
At this point, the woman who ended up with Hitty decided to dress her as a pincushion and sell her at a bazaar. She ripped off all of Hitty’s clothes, except for the chemise with the cross-stitched name. And that was the end of Hitty’s bridal dress. I hope you have enjoyed this tribute to Hitty as a bride.
