Artwork: Blood on Iceflowers
Oh yes, another quicky_bang, I couldn't resist picking another marvelous short story to illustrate. This short fic has such strong visuals I just had to grab it. Once again I spent more time on it than a quicky should require and besides the papercutting I played with watercolours and more... Check the behind the scenes if you're curious how I made:
Title: The Ice Age [ LJ | AO3]
Author: balder12
Artwork by: beelikej
Characters: Sam, Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3800
Enticements/Warnings: Gen. Post ep Supernatural S9Ep09
Summary: Sam doesn't know what the man in the trench coat wants. All he knows is the man is very insistent, and the ice is getting closer.
Artwork: Blood on Iceflowers
The original artwork #nofilter
Additional Art
I also made dividers and icons:)
How it was made
Pencil sketches of my ideas right after reading. I ended up combining the first two.
May 9th: saw this glorious sunset from my backwindow; the colours reminded me of what I had read and I used these photos as a reference for the background:)
Initially I wanted to show Sam only from the back, but this intense face made me change my mind. Gadreel!Sam from S09Ep03 and Castiel from S06Ep10.
For the iceflowers/snowflakes I tried a folding tutorial, was not thrilled about the result, plus I realized it was impossible to fold the small size I wanted to create.
Outline set up of the portraits; I made two because I didn't know yet what colouring technique would work best. I started with watercolours.
I added layer upon layer of yellows, reds, oranges and a bit of blue.
Checking the result of the watercolours on the back of the mirrored pencil sketches and moving on to colouringtechnique number two: melted crayons.
After heating the paper with an iron I have a couple of seconds to colour (hot!hot!hot!) - the wax of the crayon melts and adding more heat changes the colours. It's messy making layers
The result of the crayon experiment looks quite bloody. Before I decide on a background I spent an evening cutting iceflowers/snowflakes out of sparkling white paper.
Of course I can't resist playing with light and shadows when I'm done;) Then it's time to start cutting the portraits...
As you can see I chose the watercolour background. Cutting requires precision, but the real test of patience is carefully taking out the cut piece without tearing tiny edges, pffff.
The eyes are the most nervewracking part, eeep. Slowly but surely their faces appear.
Putting all the elements together: I make a complete composition with black paper for the back, waves of ice and snowflowers:-)
I did a drip test before I add a drop of blood as a finishing touch. READ THE STORY!!
The original photo of the artwork; I adjusted the colours and added text to make the storybanner. Tadaah:)
Credits
Thank you, balder12 for offering that awesome story and giving me my first chance to visualize Castiel.
For some really cool photos of actual snowflakes (that look like iceflowers;) check out Terminal Frost. I used it as inspiration, as well as this DIY arts & crafts blog: How to make elaborate paper snowflakes.
Now... there are still more stories on offer in the quicky_bang so I'm still tempted to do another one, but I have a collaboration for MTB to finish first, so we'll see...
;-)
J.
My Masterlist of Artsy Fiddling
Title: The Ice Age [ LJ | AO3]
Author: balder12
Artwork by: beelikej
Characters: Sam, Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3800
Enticements/Warnings: Gen. Post ep Supernatural S9Ep09
Summary: Sam doesn't know what the man in the trench coat wants. All he knows is the man is very insistent, and the ice is getting closer.
Artwork: Blood on Iceflowers
The original artwork #nofilter
Additional Art
I also made dividers and icons:)
How it was made
Pencil sketches of my ideas right after reading. I ended up combining the first two.
May 9th: saw this glorious sunset from my backwindow; the colours reminded me of what I had read and I used these photos as a reference for the background:)
Initially I wanted to show Sam only from the back, but this intense face made me change my mind. Gadreel!Sam from S09Ep03 and Castiel from S06Ep10.
For the iceflowers/snowflakes I tried a folding tutorial, was not thrilled about the result, plus I realized it was impossible to fold the small size I wanted to create.
Outline set up of the portraits; I made two because I didn't know yet what colouring technique would work best. I started with watercolours.
I added layer upon layer of yellows, reds, oranges and a bit of blue.
Checking the result of the watercolours on the back of the mirrored pencil sketches and moving on to colouringtechnique number two: melted crayons.
After heating the paper with an iron I have a couple of seconds to colour (hot!hot!hot!) - the wax of the crayon melts and adding more heat changes the colours. It's messy making layers
The result of the crayon experiment looks quite bloody. Before I decide on a background I spent an evening cutting iceflowers/snowflakes out of sparkling white paper.
Of course I can't resist playing with light and shadows when I'm done;) Then it's time to start cutting the portraits...
As you can see I chose the watercolour background. Cutting requires precision, but the real test of patience is carefully taking out the cut piece without tearing tiny edges, pffff.
The eyes are the most nervewracking part, eeep. Slowly but surely their faces appear.
Putting all the elements together: I make a complete composition with black paper for the back, waves of ice and snowflowers:-)
I did a drip test before I add a drop of blood as a finishing touch. READ THE STORY!!
The original photo of the artwork; I adjusted the colours and added text to make the storybanner. Tadaah:)
Credits
Thank you, balder12 for offering that awesome story and giving me my first chance to visualize Castiel.
For some really cool photos of actual snowflakes (that look like iceflowers;) check out Terminal Frost. I used it as inspiration, as well as this DIY arts & crafts blog: How to make elaborate paper snowflakes.
Now... there are still more stories on offer in the quicky_bang so I'm still tempted to do another one, but I have a collaboration for MTB to finish first, so we'll see...
;-)
J.
My Masterlist of Artsy Fiddling