From start ---- to finish! (This first picture was my original drawing before I cut it all out of the black poster board, and I work from the back side so the picture below is flipped to the front of course.)
(The quote from Stephanie Meyer's Midnight Sun -- "My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?" was added digitally and is not on the original picture.)I've been working on and off on this since about last September and it's finally done! It's called "Opposites" ...
At the slanted angle you can sort of see the layers of paper, but the depth that this has is mostly lost in a picture rather than in person... so.. you'll just have to imagine that you can see the depth of the layers of paper... This is the hardest one that I've ever made so far and I had to draw all the lines and detail on a different sheet of paper before laying it over the black paper and cutting it all out with a razor blade.
They are quite white, but what you can't see in this picture is the shadows and variance of color to their skin. Bella's cheeks are slightly pink as well, her headband is Edwards favorite color and I tried to make everything about her look slightly warmer and his coloring is all slightly cooler than hers, but they also both look just like people (not a vampire and human) so even if someone didn't know the story they would still enjoy the picture of a man and woman and the opposites represented in the sun that is intertwined in her hair and the moon and stars behind him.
This is what I see since 95% of the work is all done from the back side as I layer (tediously) each little piece of paper that I have to cut just right to fit and then turn it over to make sure I didn't do something weird since I can't quite see what I'm doing. Or I turn it over to try to orient myself to know which direction I need to lay the papers or what color to use in any given place.
And there you have it. From the story and quote I was inspired to make the sun intertwine with her hair. "Midnight Sun" also talks about the red highlights in her hair when she's in the sun (which doesn't happen very often in the books) Also, the books say that Edward's hair is "bronze" which is pretty close to what I have here except that there's a bit more blond to the "bronze" color (closer to the color of the actor) and that's mainly to get the contrast of the brown/red of her hair. The moon is slightly grayish and the stars have a very light blue hint to them, and Edward's shirt is varying shades of gray (hard to see in the pictures) and that was to emphasize his coldness and the coldness of night compared to the warmth of the sun and a human as well. The perspective that I took on this art was to go at it from Edwards point of view... how he sees himself and how he sees her... this is why she (and her hair) are in the majority of the picture and why his colors (except the hair) is blander than hers. My dad asked me about the expressions, and no they are not meant to look "happy" .. the expressions are exactly what I was meaning to do - that being that they are full of restrained desire. The magnetic pull and yet the polar opposites. A tug of war with emotions if you will. The expressions were based off of the actors in "Twilight" only in that scene Bella was on the left side (I reversed it because I wanted it to look like it was all from Edward's perspective, just like "Midnight Sun")
This piece of art will be starting at $800 in case anyone is interested. I'm going to be matting it and putting it in a frame pretty soon. The matting sort of becomes part of the art in how I do it (because I use black paper to matte it) Anyway, the owner of the gallery that housed my art (before he retired) said that he liked the matting the way I did it because it was an extension of the art. He also said that I needed to keep doing this because it was so unique that I'd be depriving the world if I didn't continue. I might put up more (better) pictures of it later, but I'm so tired from doing this (it's been a long road) that I wanted to post right when I finished to encourage myself to do the final little details and to sell it. ... I don't really "like" to sell my art because I put so much into them, but I suppose that's the irony of turning art into a business. ;]
Oh, and with all of my art... even though I have some definite ideas of what I was thinking when I made it all I also like to make them in such a way to let the viewer make up their own interpretations. If you see more or less or something totally different than what I was thinking when I made it THAT'S WONDERFUL! Really, art is meant to be enjoyed by everyone. I love how people can see things that I didn't even intend to put into something... and, I'm happy to share what I was thinking when I did something, but I don't want people to try to figure out what *I* intended. Rather, look for your own meaning in it and enjoy it in the way that fits with where you are.
In my opinion art that allows for this freedom while simultaneously having a deeper meaning that was intended is what makes it great.
((My next paper artwork will be a burning money tree... many deeper meanings to that one as well. It will be fun.)) ;]
