Artwork QuickyBang 2019-1, the second: Mary & Azazel!

[beelikej]

Of course I had to grab another awesome ficlet in this round of the quicky_bang! I claimed a story featuring Mary Winchester and a twist on the origine of the Supernatural canon. My artwork turned out to be a bit on the conceptual side I think, but I was commited to my first idea and even though I struggled to pull the whole piece together, I had fun fiddling with Azazel. This is the result:



Title: Transposition [AO3]
Author: amypond45
Artwork by: beelikej
Medium: Papercutting & paint.
Characters: Mary Winchester, Azazel, Sam & Dean Winchester
Art Rating: PG | Fic Rating: PG | Word count: 1073
Summary: What if Mary didn’t die that night in the nursery?

Full Artwork

The full piece also includes Dean standing outside the house looking up at the burning building while holding Sammy. (Click to zoom)

Alternative Banner


Making Of
Most of the proces is pretty much self-explanatory, but of course I had to add commentary:)





Was inspired by this great graphic eye painting as a style choice for Azazel's eyes.




I later decided to ditch the white in the eyes to make them less clunky looking.




Had made a mask of the shades in Mary's face in Photoshop, I'm tracing it on my lighttable here to then create a shape that's suitable for papercutting.




I like the shape of her face; the next step is to add another shade but...


...even though I've done this type of layering before I can't get the darker shade to work and the more I try to correct it the more hideous it gets...


To distract myself, I play with the shape of Azazel; I want to create the illusion of smoke or a vague shadowy figure. I use an, ehm, random photo I have lying around to test the effect with a back light. I do also still want to use the graphic eyes though, hmmm.


After another test with the extra shade for Mary, I chose to dismiss that; I actually prefer that the fire colours of the background shine through her face.
I doodle an Azazel, but I still don't quite know how to visualize him next to Mary.


So instead I focus on Dean. I create a silhouette of him carrying baby Sam and add a windowframe to the composition.


Then I can't ignore Azazel any longer. I commit to a graphic shape and continue to experiment with that...


Besides the paperversion, I also create a plastic layer, but it's too transparent to catch on camera.


I cut up the face shape to create a raster like effect...


It took more time than expected to put the paperstrips neatly together again after cutting. Fortunately I had made a second shape so I could figure out the full shape (stupid thin paper kept sliding, it was like a tense game of mikado)


The negative cut-out was fun to play with though:)


Okay, back to business; the paperstrip face is still too solid, so I take every other strip out and glue them to the plastic layer for my final raster effect.


I love how it looks as a silhouette, but it doesn't really work on the painted background :(


I like the look of the shaded face behind the background (made with the lighttable) but I wish I could manage to capture the colours (and Mary's nightgown) as they are in natural light.


This is the final photo with the lighttable from underneath to show Azazel, sunshine from the side to light up Mary's paperface and a spotlight on silhouette Dean (to give him depth)
For the definite artwork up above I did some slight digital touch-ups for light and colours.

So as usual photography was a struggle, but I am happy that I came pretty close to the concept I had in mind: the illusion of a room on fire and the connection of what was going on inside the house while Dean was outside.

Credits
Sources:
Eye painting by The Obanoth
I rewatched and screencapped the Pilot episode of Supernatural for Mary's face and Dean's point of view.
Used stock references for Dean with Sam and Azazel's face shape from Dreamstime.com [x] and Depositphotos.com [x] respectively; basically these where example silhouettes that I adjusted to fit the fic.
Fonts: Braveblood (Names) by Artisan Studio.
A Little Sunshine (Numbers) by Vanessa Bays for bythebutterfly.
Bridgetown (Title) by Mercurial.

Bonus close up of Sam & Dean


Thank you amypond45, for offering your fic, I love the whole idea of flipping canon around. Mary is badass! \m/

J.

P.S. Comments are appreciated! (Concrit is welcome:)

P.P.S. Do you also want a short story to make art for? The Quicky_Bang is still running; Read.Claim.Art!

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