Artwork for spn_cinema 2013!
For this year's Cinema Challenge I wanted to try a couple of new things. Besides adding a lady to my usual mix of men, I explored papercutting a little more; how much further could I reduce shapes? On top of that I was intrigued by the sudden popularity of melted crayons and I meant to do something with that to contrast the tight lines of the papercutting. I wasn't too impressed by the rather wasteful blowdrying technique, so instead I played with a hot iron... Haha! (I wasn't using it for my clothes anyway;)
May I present to you: three minimal portraits and a lot of artsy fiddling:
Title: Imaginary Infatuations
Made for: spn_cinema 2013
Movie Prompt: Les Amours Imaginaires (2010, English title: Heartbeats)
Medium: Papercutting, crayons, bit of Photoshopping.
Rating: G for art; R for concept I suppose
Pairing: polyamorous ~ Jensen/Jeff; Danneel/Jeff; Jensen & Danneel are BFFs
Concept: At a party best friends Jensen and Danneel meet Jeff, whose charisma overwhelms them both. They try to find out who he fancies most, but deny their crush on him to each other. At every other chance they flirt with Jeff while secretly sabotaging the other one's efforts. Slowly their lifelong friendship starts to crumble.
Artwork
Filmposter
The original film's DVD cover features the photos of the actors' faces on a red/purple/pink background. I coloured pieces of paper with melted crayons (wax!) and cut portraits of my favorite combination of people to recreate this image. Here's what the portraits look like unedited:
Zoom in to see my couch through the cut outs:) Below I'm showing exactly how I cut and coloured these faces!
Here is a digital set up I made before I started:
As you can see, I eventually chose different photos from Jensen and Danneel to work with, because I wanted to capture the mood of the film. (It's not all flirty fun) That's also why I changed the translation of the original title. I felt the alliteration of infatuation and imaginary fit better with the somewhat snarky French:)
Detail of Jeff's paperportrait:
For a closer look at all three portraits, scroll down to 'behind the scenes'.
Portrait poetry
While I was reminiscing about the film, I also remembered a couple of songs that fit the theme of imaginary love and potential threesomes... I picked parts of the lyrics that tell a bit more about the mindset of each character.
Danneel - No I In Threesome by Interpol ~~~|~~~ Jeff - Imaginary Love by Rufus Wainwright
Jeff - Imaginary Love by Rufus Wainwright ~~~|~~~ Jensen - Secretly by Skunk Anansie
(Yes, I posted Jeff twice, I like him the symmetry, okay.)
Icons
1.
2.
3.
Below I'm babbling -a lot- about the different techniques I used. If you want to skip that, click here to go right down to the credits and a treat to thank you for stopping by.
Behind the scenes
From photo to sketch
DIY: layer your colour image with a hard mix filter or turn a gray scale image into bitmap (50% black/white). Works best with images that have a good contrast, but as you can tell, you can add lost details by hand:)
From sketch to cut-out
As you may know I previously worked with coloured paper to create portraits in layers. This time I wanted to only use one sheet of paper, which meant the cut out had to be an inversed version of my earlier style. I did a couple of test portraits to see what method of colouring with melted crayons would work best. I ended up redoing Danneel's and Jensen's faces.
First technique:
Danneel (sketch first, cut second, crayons last)
Made a pencil outline from the digital sketch & cut out the black parts.
The big experiment with a hot iron... Trying to figure out the best way to make a mess melt the crayons. Heating the paper seems to be the way to go, but it cools down fast and I have about 5-10 seconds before the crayon turns into solid wax. Plus: the colour of the crayon changes when a layer is reheated. (See if you can discover how I placed the iron in the different portraits;)
Last step: drawing in the earring I forgot before;). Result is not that bad, but colouring over the cut out shape had to be done carefully, which is not an easy combination with the limited cool down time... Also: the wax layer is too smooth to draw on so it's impossible to do touch ups with crayons afterwards. This is such a fun experiment:)
After the efforts below, I redid Daneel's portrait using another method (see Jeff) and coloured the paper before cutting. I also used heavier paper: 300 grams Motif Premium White.
Almost done. Playing with the cut out shapes is fun:)
The first and final version next to each other. Spot the difference!
Second technique:
Jensen (crayons first, sketch second, cut last)
After struggling with the colouring after cutting, I flipped the method around and first made a melted crayon layer on the front, before tracing a (mirrored!) sketch on the back. It works better but it's still not perfect.
(In the bottom right picture you can clearly see the 'paper bridges' I had to build in his hair to connect the different parts)
I was also not happy with Jensen's scruffy look, so went back to the first digital sketch, shaved him and made a new pencil version before putting on the pink layer and cutting the paper.
After cutting a couple of portraits my fingers started to protest; to prevent the potential blisters from getting worse I put covers on my hand. (Too late, but at least I could continue fiddling;)
The first and final version. Doesn't he look much younger without the scruff? I like it better. YMMV of course;)
Final technique:
Jeff (sketch first, crayons second, cut last)
Jeff's glasses caused me a lot of problems, but by this time I at least had mastered the perfect order of steps to make the most of the melted crayon/cutting paper combination.
The reason I struggled with Jeff's face was that it had a lot of unconnected shapes, which forced me to add extra 'paper bridges' in between to keep it all together. That's why his portrait seems a little distorted. I still love him and his funky glasses though;)
Result! Clickable big size images of the final portraits:
I photographed these on top of black paper.
Source material:
Danneel at the Hollywood Domino Gala 2011 by Dimitrios Kambouris (Getty Images North America)
Jeff at the The Possession premiere 2012 by Nikki Nelson (WENN)
Jensen at Vancon2012 by wolfpup2000
Thank you for stopping by, have some... shadowportraits!
:-)
The end.
Amused/Appalled? I appreciate all comments :)
J.
P.S. I loved playing with this idea on my own, but just so you know: I wouldn't mind if this artwork in turn prompted an author! (I had wanted to do some scenes as well, but ran out of time. If someone happens to want to write fic featuring this threesome, I'd love to make more visuals!
Previous papercutting: Baker!Jeff/Jensen | Sick!Jared/Jensen (both with fanfic!)
Earlier cinema artwork: Jeff/Jensen/Jared as Pirates | Sam & Dean as claypuppets
My masterlist of artsy fiddling
May I present to you: three minimal portraits and a lot of artsy fiddling:
Title: Imaginary Infatuations
Made for: spn_cinema 2013
Movie Prompt: Les Amours Imaginaires (2010, English title: Heartbeats)
Medium: Papercutting, crayons, bit of Photoshopping.
Rating: G for art; R for concept I suppose
Pairing: polyamorous ~ Jensen/Jeff; Danneel/Jeff; Jensen & Danneel are BFFs
Concept: At a party best friends Jensen and Danneel meet Jeff, whose charisma overwhelms them both. They try to find out who he fancies most, but deny their crush on him to each other. At every other chance they flirt with Jeff while secretly sabotaging the other one's efforts. Slowly their lifelong friendship starts to crumble.
Artwork
Filmposter
The original film's DVD cover features the photos of the actors' faces on a red/purple/pink background. I coloured pieces of paper with melted crayons (wax!) and cut portraits of my favorite combination of people to recreate this image. Here's what the portraits look like unedited:
Zoom in to see my couch through the cut outs:) Below I'm showing exactly how I cut and coloured these faces!
Here is a digital set up I made before I started:
As you can see, I eventually chose different photos from Jensen and Danneel to work with, because I wanted to capture the mood of the film. (It's not all flirty fun) That's also why I changed the translation of the original title. I felt the alliteration of infatuation and imaginary fit better with the somewhat snarky French:)
Detail of Jeff's paperportrait:
For a closer look at all three portraits, scroll down to 'behind the scenes'.
Portrait poetry
While I was reminiscing about the film, I also remembered a couple of songs that fit the theme of imaginary love and potential threesomes... I picked parts of the lyrics that tell a bit more about the mindset of each character.
Danneel - No I In Threesome by Interpol ~~~|~~~ Jeff - Imaginary Love by Rufus Wainwright
Jeff - Imaginary Love by Rufus Wainwright ~~~|~~~ Jensen - Secretly by Skunk Anansie
(Yes, I posted Jeff twice, I like him the symmetry, okay.)
Icons
1.
2.
3.
Below I'm babbling -a lot- about the different techniques I used. If you want to skip that, click here to go right down to the credits and a treat to thank you for stopping by.
Behind the scenes
From photo to sketch
DIY: layer your colour image with a hard mix filter or turn a gray scale image into bitmap (50% black/white). Works best with images that have a good contrast, but as you can tell, you can add lost details by hand:)
From sketch to cut-out
As you may know I previously worked with coloured paper to create portraits in layers. This time I wanted to only use one sheet of paper, which meant the cut out had to be an inversed version of my earlier style. I did a couple of test portraits to see what method of colouring with melted crayons would work best. I ended up redoing Danneel's and Jensen's faces.
First technique:
Danneel (sketch first, cut second, crayons last)
Made a pencil outline from the digital sketch & cut out the black parts.
The big experiment with a hot iron... Trying to figure out the best way to make a mess melt the crayons. Heating the paper seems to be the way to go, but it cools down fast and I have about 5-10 seconds before the crayon turns into solid wax. Plus: the colour of the crayon changes when a layer is reheated. (See if you can discover how I placed the iron in the different portraits;)
Last step: drawing in the earring I forgot before;). Result is not that bad, but colouring over the cut out shape had to be done carefully, which is not an easy combination with the limited cool down time... Also: the wax layer is too smooth to draw on so it's impossible to do touch ups with crayons afterwards. This is such a fun experiment:)
After the efforts below, I redid Daneel's portrait using another method (see Jeff) and coloured the paper before cutting. I also used heavier paper: 300 grams Motif Premium White.
Almost done. Playing with the cut out shapes is fun:)
The first and final version next to each other. Spot the difference!
Second technique:
Jensen (crayons first, sketch second, cut last)
After struggling with the colouring after cutting, I flipped the method around and first made a melted crayon layer on the front, before tracing a (mirrored!) sketch on the back. It works better but it's still not perfect.
(In the bottom right picture you can clearly see the 'paper bridges' I had to build in his hair to connect the different parts)
I was also not happy with Jensen's scruffy look, so went back to the first digital sketch, shaved him and made a new pencil version before putting on the pink layer and cutting the paper.
After cutting a couple of portraits my fingers started to protest; to prevent the potential blisters from getting worse I put covers on my hand. (Too late, but at least I could continue fiddling;)
The first and final version. Doesn't he look much younger without the scruff? I like it better. YMMV of course;)
Final technique:
Jeff (sketch first, crayons second, cut last)
Jeff's glasses caused me a lot of problems, but by this time I at least had mastered the perfect order of steps to make the most of the melted crayon/cutting paper combination.
The reason I struggled with Jeff's face was that it had a lot of unconnected shapes, which forced me to add extra 'paper bridges' in between to keep it all together. That's why his portrait seems a little distorted. I still love him and his funky glasses though;)
Result! Clickable big size images of the final portraits:
I photographed these on top of black paper.
Source material:
Danneel at the Hollywood Domino Gala 2011 by Dimitrios Kambouris (Getty Images North America)
Jeff at the The Possession premiere 2012 by Nikki Nelson (WENN)
Jensen at Vancon2012 by wolfpup2000
Thank you for stopping by, have some... shadowportraits!
:-)
The end.
Amused/Appalled? I appreciate all comments :)
J.
P.S. I loved playing with this idea on my own, but just so you know: I wouldn't mind if this artwork in turn prompted an author! (I had wanted to do some scenes as well, but ran out of time. If someone happens to want to write fic featuring this threesome, I'd love to make more visuals!
Previous papercutting: Baker!Jeff/Jensen | Sick!Jared/Jensen (both with fanfic!)
Earlier cinema artwork: Jeff/Jensen/Jared as Pirates | Sam & Dean as claypuppets
My masterlist of artsy fiddling