beelikej | BigBang 2013 ARTPOST the second

Yay, time to show you my second set of artwork for this year's

spn_j2_bigbang! More of a mystery/thriller story than an exploration of romance, it was a real challenge to come up with fitting visuals. I also had to patiently wait with fiddling while my injured shoulder was healing. The extra brainstorming time worked out great though. When I finally figured out I wanted to capture the concept instead of the action of the story, my arm was fit enough to explore yet another creative technique. I proudly present:

Title: Storm’s Eye
NOTE 2014: Sorry, this fanfic is no longer available: the author took the story off line because it was published as original fiction. Read more here.
Author:

meus_venator
Artist:

beelikej
Medium: Papersculpture, (melted) crayons, marker, Photoshop
Pairings: Jared/Jensen, Misha/Jensen, Ty/Jensen, Jared/OMCs
Story rating: NC-17 (art is PG)
Word count: 57k
Warnings: Non-con (a graphic rape scene flashback), kidnapping, violence, memories of child abuse (non-sexual), animal death.
Summary: In spite of all the bad memories and fears, Jensen had dutifully returned home to Mt. Desert Island, Maine to look after his ailing mother. After her passing, financially devastated by her care and emotionally exhausted, Jensen tries to pick up the pieces of his life and rebuild his floundering career as an illustrator. While working on a new commission, he finds an unconscious man at the local lighthouse. When the man regains consciousness, he has no memory. The only clue to his identity is a limited edition hardcover copy of Storms Eye, a mystery novel by Jensen’s favorite author and client. Inside is a scrawled dedication, ‘To Jared’. What is this man’s story? And why, since meeting him, has Jensen’s life strangely paralleled the plot of the book that he carried? Will Jensen weather the harrowing trials of ‘Storm’s Eye’? Or will he become a casualty of the mysterious stranger to whom he opened his heart?

All the artwork
(Click the images for bigger version;)

Storyheader
See above. I also made an e-book cover with different dimensions:

Besides showing Jensen's point of view, I wanted to capture the concept of the story in which Jensen's life seems be connected to the book. It is as if his world is shaped by the words he is reading and visualizing. Since the lighthouse is where he finds Jared, I made a papersculpture out of the actual story, reflecting the source of the mystery. So the banner is not only an illustration, but it is also made of the story. It's very meta;)

For the drawing of Jensen and his dog I tried to simulate artist Jensen's style of black line drawings and watercolor - I used melted crayons to create the same type of effect;)

If you're curious about the process there's an explanation below about how I made the different parts of the banner.

Chapterheaders
After my lovely author hinted about wanting Jensen and Jared's gorgeous eyes to be part of the art, I came up with a combination of a literal storm's eye with my paper/book theme. I made a whirlwind out of the clouds and the letters that were taken out of the lighthouse:

The headers feature the four main characters in the story: Jensen, Jared, Ty and Misha. The chapternumbers are cut out of the actual story too, to connect this set with the story banner and concept. Plus these snippets of scenes refer to a couple of other people who are important in Jensen's life.
(Here's an extra challenge: see if you can find what scenes the numbers were cut from, or what naughty words are missing;)

Dividers
The stormy clouds for the author are transparent; I added a white background to show them in my own black journal:

Icons
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The end. (Unless you want to know more about the process, you can click here to go right down for something extra:)

A glimpse into the process of my paper cutting....
Not a step by step tutorial this time, but hopefully these photos will explain it well enough;) First an overview of all the different lighthouses I made:

At the top the photo I used as reference.
From left to right: first rough sketch and testcolouring with melted crayons and markers (see below for more on that technique);
a quick pen sketch on a page of the story to decide on size and to test cutting;
a final proper pencil sketch on heavy paper, which I used to create a template.

From test-cutting with the pensketch I learned I was going to need a firmer template that would survive beyond cutting five pages:)

I also figured I should take the time to use rulers to draw the lighthouse, even though that tested my patience *grins*

To be able to create a different layer for extra depth, I left parts of the template attached to remind me not to cut out all the shapes at once.

It turned out to be impossible to cut out the shape in one go, so I created quite a pile of paper. This was just from the outline! The tiny bits that I cut out of the lighthouse later left even a bigger mess;)

The papersculpture is build out of three layers: the story at the bottom, the outline of the middle layer (out of which I later cut the see through bits) and the top-layer of the lighthouse (here still covered by the template).

A closer look at the middle layer: to cut the see through parts I folded down the shapes in the template that were part of the toplayer to prevent myself from cutting too much.

Detail of balcony before cleaning up the corners. To give the illusion of a staircase inside the tower, I cut out windows on the toplayer.

Okay, I admit: I cheated a little on the middle layer by cutting out one shape for the light: I just didn't have the patience to make all those beam holes again. :-p

Checking depth and see through bits. I used the small cut out snippets in the banner too; I made several photos of the left over piles of paperbits, and made them woosh in the clouds;)

To test shading and lightfall, I made several photo's of the lighthouse in a (fake) book. I ended up recreating the effect in the banner by mixing together different photos digitally.

Complete lighthouse after cleaning up the rough edges.\o/ Below you'll find an animation to show how the lighthouse ended up in the banner:)

If you want to know more about my drawing technique, scroll on. Seen enough babbling behind the scenes? Click here to go right down for something extra:)

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The continued experiment with melting crayons
I used this technique before to colour my inversed papercut portraits. This time I wanted to actually draw shapes. I used a hot iron to heat the paper and then had about five seconds to colour with crayons before the paper cooled down and the crayon turned solid again. FYI: working from light to dark colours is best (just like with watercolours) you can add layers and horrible blobs can be recoloured by heating the same area again or by carefully scraping of the solid wax layer. There is a limit to the amount of fixing you can do though, so it's mostly taking a deep breath and just going for it;)

Pencil sketch covered with melted crayon. To get the shape of the drawing back, the next step is tracing the outline with marker... (Trick is to make a mirror version of the sketch on the back of the paper beforehand as the wax covers up the pencil;)

Detail of the waves I used in the background: I made a freeform with melted crayons in different shades of blue, then traced the outline with black marker.

Because the wax of the crayons cloggs up the marker-ink, you can only do short lines at the time before you have to do squiggles to remove the wax. I had an emergency black pencil on stand by;)

An earlier complete composition of all the seperate parts and first rough crayon sketch to check perspective.

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Animation WIP

After sending the above set up to my author, we debated the colours of Jensen's clothes and decided he looks best in green;) Here's a screenshot of the final composition and its layers (there were many more hidden while I was working on it, feel free to ask about filters and such;) Click for bigger size!

And finally: a gif of how I put the new drawing, the waves and the paper lighthouse together:

Sources
Sourcematerial and inspirational images are linked in my source-post. Beware: I also parked an NC17 papercut scene from my first BB-art set there. If you don't want to see it, don't scroll up after clicking the link;) Have a PG-rated image instead:

Something extra
Just like artist Jensen, I couldn't resist doing a quick sketchy thingy of sleeping Jared. Enjoy:

If you read the story, you'll notice I tried to recreate the setting of the sketchpad;)

Thank yous
Thank you,

meus_venator, for writing an inspirational story and then waiting patiently until I was ready to fiddle:) Also thanks to the magnificent

spn_j2_bigbang mods for the smooth organisation.
Thank you, dear visitor, for stopping by! FYI: all comments are welcome;)

J.

BB2013 Artpost the first = J3! | my masterlist of artsy fiddling

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

wataru-kisugi.livejournal.com

Awesome artworks! I'm really impressed by the paper-sculpture! Also I'm toddler class concerning Photoshop, your explanation is very helpful. Thank you for sharing your wonderful works!!

From:

BigBang 2013 ARTPOST the second

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