Apropos of nothing, an irregular visit to the outstanding digital art manipulation web site Freaking News yielded the above Photoshopped gem. FN classifies Cat Bath as a “merged painting,” offering the additional qualifier “strange.” Fair enough.

Sure, I railed on cell phones and email the other day. But sometimes technology can help us see with fresh eyes. Or hear with fresh ears.

Full merge painting, plus both originals, below the fold.

AZRainman, Cat Bath (2007)

William Bouguereau, Nymphes et Satyre (1873)

William John Huggins, A Tiger and a Serpent (1841)

As an aside, the FN Cat Bath source page includes 19 other exquisite merges, in addition to the following fascinating, behind-the-scenes .jpg, which gives digital-art luddites like myself an iceberg’s-tip idea of how exactly the merge is made to appear so facile and seamless:

Cat Bath merge by AZRainman, whose Flickr photostream frankly warrants its own post.