Artpost: ReverseBang 2018-2!

[beelikej]

As has become tradition when doing a second piece of artwork for the spn_reversebang, I chose to play with J2 (my first always involves JDM *grins*). I came into this fandom through fics that feature the whole old CW gang and for old time's sake, I wanted to create a prompt that had all of those guys in it. Then I came across a photoshoot about people on the beach and one of the pictures gave me the idea for surfer dudes. The merman didn't pop into my head until I started sketching. (More about that in the making off).
My author took my prompt back to Jared and Jensen's childhood and that inspired the storyheader I made. May I present to you:



Prompt Number: R1009
Art title: There's An Ocean To Drift In
Artist: beelikej
Title: As Long As You're Mine [LJ | DW]

Author: backrose_17
Pairing(s: Surfer!Jensen/Merman!Jared | Fandom/Genre: RPF, AU, Romance, Supernatural creatures
Rating: PG-13 (all the art is rated G:) | Word Count: 11326 | Warnings: None (See tags at AO3!)
Summary: Jensen has always been called to the water.
Jared has always longed to see the surface world.
One trip changes both of their lives and forges a bond that can never be broken.

Prompt & Additional artwork
This was the original artprompt (There is a making of below!)

I added this short description to lure in an author: Five surfers (Jensen, Chris, Tom, Mike & Chad;) and merman Jared. Is this their first sighting or have they been long time friends? Are they springbreak students, (semi) pro surfers? Is it the 1960s/70s/80s/or an imaginary era where merfolk are common?
Read the story to find out what happens!

Chapterheaders
For these I used details from the promptscene and waves.







I did edit Ch. 4 a little bit to get all the elements into the frame:)
Also: having them together you can see the different colours. It's the same blue paper, but I took the photos in september and november respectively, hence the difference.

Dividers





Making of the artprompt

Photoshoot by Eva Roefs (with text by Lotte Stig) for Volkskrant Magazine J19Nr3, 7 July 2018.
I scanned and edited the photo to get a base for my beach set up.


My original idea was to have the guys pose behind the screen with just their heads showing.
I would leave it unclear if maybe one of them actually was a merman.
While fiddling digitally, before deciding on a definite medium to work in,
I found a photo that had an awesome surfgang, but I couldn't get it to work
with the dimensions of my screen set up.


So I chose to use that image as my scene instead. I put Chris (Kane), Tom (Welling) Mike (Rosenbaum) and Chad (Michael Murray) on actual surfboards together with Jensen and I turned Jared into a real merman.
By then I had decided to go with papercutting and I added a simple wave shape as a frame.


Casting the parts: can you tell who's who on the boards?
Picking papercolours and tracing outlines for cutting.


Adjusting the bodies to make individual shapes and away I go...


Tadaah.


You can't tell, but there's three hours (3!) in between these two photos because I started to have doubts about the papercutting and wondered if I maybe should draw the scene instead. I worked on that before returning to this version and adding the wave.


Here's the drawing I made in between. After that, I added swimshorts to the papercut and then I didn't know which version I wanted to submit. *sighs*


I figured I just experiment with both. I found shiny paper for Jared's tail and I cut surfboards.


Now I kind of favor the paperversion again, even more so when I add the hair.


As an alternative I cut the drawn dudes and mix them with the paperboards and waves.


Ack, what to do, what to do? I opt to do a photoshoot with both and then make a final decision.


As you've seen up top, the paperversion won in the end:)


Making of the storyheader

My author described this scene right in the first pitch and I immediately wanted to visualize the boys chatting on the rocks. Here's the pencil sketch I made. (To the left you can see a vague outline for a different Jensen, but that pose wouldn't work in papercutting, so I quickly dismissed it:)
Time to start cutting!


I used a pincer to position the tiny waves on Jensen's swimshorts.
To fit with the look of the prompt artwork, I chose the same color paper for the boys' bodies.


A new experiment: folding Jensen's arm looked even better than I'd imagined:)


I shortened Jared's tail when I realized the reference I used had a human boy with a fake tail that was longer to fit his feet; an actual merboy's fins would not stretch out that far, duh.


Used this cutsheet with tiny flags from my FLOW paperbook to cut their sprinkled icecream.


As a finishing touch I added a waffle pattern with pencil.


Oooh, there was some sunlight peaking from behind the high flat across the street, so I build an cardboard tower to be able to catch some rays and make photos with nice shades.


I tried different angles, but the hard shadows made it look odd and the winter sun makes the blue look greenish. *pouts*


Luckily I also captured some soft shading. To perk up the colours a little I added a soft light filter in Photoshop (and I also cleaned up a few glue dots;).


That's all, folks!


Sources & Thanks
Title for the artprompt from Swim by Jack's Mannequin (gorgeous graphics in that video)
Vintage surfing photo: Photo Media/ClassicStock/CORBIS (found on TheWeek.com)
Merfolk and tail examples: FinFunMermaid.com and TheMerTailor.com
Different kids on the rocks: Alamy.com (StockPhoto)
Patterned paper: FLOW, book for paper lovers, 2014 edition.

Fonts: Most of the text is set in Qiber by Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya for The Northern Block Ltd.
The apostrophe is Alyssum Blossom by Bombastype.
The 2, 3 & 4 on the Chapterheaders are Bernhard Modern Std by Lucian Bernhard for ATF.

Thanks, backrose_17 for claiming my merman!Jared and surfer!Jensen and giving them a history and a future together:)

J.


For more papercutting or my other artworks check out the tags below or browse through My Masterlist of Artsy Fiddlings:)

Comments

[nagi_schwarz]

Your art is awesome. So cool to see the process! Well done.

[beelikej]

Thank you very much! Great to hear you liked the look behind the scenes as well:)

[brightly_lit]

I LOVE paper cutout art!!! And I never see it around this fandom, so it's so cool to see it here!! Are you a fan of Joseph Cornell? I could never get enough of looking at his work. There's also a wonderful book called Dime-Store Alchemy by Charles Simic, essays on Cornell, that's fantastic.

That arm-folding DID work out really well!

And the ice-cream cones are perfect!!

You did so many pieces for this story!! It's just fantastic.

[beelikej]

Thank you:) I had not heard of Joseph Cornell, so I did a bit of googling and oh my, that is glorious stuff! Will definitely check out his work in more detail.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go and roll around in your compliments. *beams*