I have long had a loving relationship with words and literature- and my two favorite pithy things are a series called The Monstrumologist and a little musical they call Les Miserables (based off the incredibly lengthy, wordy novel of the same name).
The act of sitting in a theater and breathing the same air as these amazing people for a few hours is sacred to me and it is a magic like no other. I walk around in a dazed for days after wanting to be back under the spell of a dark theater and it's bright stage full of masterful actors. They are so close and yet so far and I will not lie to say that they extent that I adore them might be considered hero-worship.
The book series is very close to my heart and that's all I'm going to say here. I chose it because it has some fabulous imagery that I knew would look awesome if I did paper cuts.
My Monstrumologist piece turned out way way tinier than I intended... I don't mind working on a small scale (the lettering was a pain) but I think the size of it makes it look fragile and that wasn't quite the effect I was going for. I think it was very minimum effort, coming from me and it looks very lonely mounted on cardboard by itself and if I had a choice I would make a series that spell out 'Monsters" because it isn't powerful enough on it's own. The letters themselves look like a poorly planned afterthought; I should have know that not even I could work on a scale that tiny.
My 'big' Cosette is a tribute to the incredible Samantha Hill (the current Cosette on Broadway) who is gorgeous and ethereal as Victor Hugo's beloved character. This is also an opportunity to bask in the glory of her gorgeous period costumes and my one disappointment about the dress is that you cannot glean it's true color- a gorgeous pale green silk. This was my first work and definitely the one that took longest. I didn't plan to make a work with just Cosette, but I was absentmindedly sketching and cutting out her hair and I realized it looked really good and I wanted to continue with her body. Because I put almost no forethought into this piece, that's why is it spliced and I had to glue two other pieces of card stock to my original one because I hadn't thought ahead. That detracts already from the slightly off composition- I made her head a smudge too big and I made the area of wig between her chin an shoulder too wide and her torso is very truncated. Overall, the effect is a bit disconcerting because you can tell
My little Cosette I have issues with. This was the piece when I realized how little time I had left to work and I panicked and I cranked this out in four and a half hours. That is shamefully little time to spend on a piece and I truly feel this is the most neglected one (and that's funny because it's little Cosette... anyone?). I tried to base the face not off the logo but off the face of the little girl we saw this summer, whose name is Angeli. However, I could not find photos of her as Cosette so I had to use her thumbnail of a head-shot as my reference photo. Apparently one of the only things I can reproduce artistically in the Les Mis logo because I have, over and over. This time there was a slight spin on it and I tied to make the face look like Angeli but I gave her the famous nappy hair and cap. I feel something is missing and I can't put my finger on it and maybe someone with fresh eyes will look at it and know.
Overall, I feel I missed the mark this summer and wasted precious, beautiful time but that being said I liked the medium I found. Paper cut-outs give you two options- positive or negative space, none of this shading and layering mess. Reducing my color palette to nil and working with an easy to find, easy to manipulate medium were good ideas. The actual compositions of the finished works were not so good. These pieces are not very strong, I think, compared to what I know I'm capable of doing and the only feeling I have about them is empty handed-ness. I have not armed myself well for critique. I stand before the barbed tongues and searching eyes with only a few scraps of paper to defend myself. I would give myself a B- for the M and the big Cosette and a solid, well deserved C for Little Cosette because that piece I feel is the weakest.
The act of sitting in a theater and breathing the same air as these amazing people for a few hours is sacred to me and it is a magic like no other. I walk around in a dazed for days after wanting to be back under the spell of a dark theater and it's bright stage full of masterful actors. They are so close and yet so far and I will not lie to say that they extent that I adore them might be considered hero-worship.
The book series is very close to my heart and that's all I'm going to say here. I chose it because it has some fabulous imagery that I knew would look awesome if I did paper cuts.
My Monstrumologist piece turned out way way tinier than I intended... I don't mind working on a small scale (the lettering was a pain) but I think the size of it makes it look fragile and that wasn't quite the effect I was going for. I think it was very minimum effort, coming from me and it looks very lonely mounted on cardboard by itself and if I had a choice I would make a series that spell out 'Monsters" because it isn't powerful enough on it's own. The letters themselves look like a poorly planned afterthought; I should have know that not even I could work on a scale that tiny.
My 'big' Cosette is a tribute to the incredible Samantha Hill (the current Cosette on Broadway) who is gorgeous and ethereal as Victor Hugo's beloved character. This is also an opportunity to bask in the glory of her gorgeous period costumes and my one disappointment about the dress is that you cannot glean it's true color- a gorgeous pale green silk. This was my first work and definitely the one that took longest. I didn't plan to make a work with just Cosette, but I was absentmindedly sketching and cutting out her hair and I realized it looked really good and I wanted to continue with her body. Because I put almost no forethought into this piece, that's why is it spliced and I had to glue two other pieces of card stock to my original one because I hadn't thought ahead. That detracts already from the slightly off composition- I made her head a smudge too big and I made the area of wig between her chin an shoulder too wide and her torso is very truncated. Overall, the effect is a bit disconcerting because you can tell
My little Cosette I have issues with. This was the piece when I realized how little time I had left to work and I panicked and I cranked this out in four and a half hours. That is shamefully little time to spend on a piece and I truly feel this is the most neglected one (and that's funny because it's little Cosette... anyone?). I tried to base the face not off the logo but off the face of the little girl we saw this summer, whose name is Angeli. However, I could not find photos of her as Cosette so I had to use her thumbnail of a head-shot as my reference photo. Apparently one of the only things I can reproduce artistically in the Les Mis logo because I have, over and over. This time there was a slight spin on it and I tied to make the face look like Angeli but I gave her the famous nappy hair and cap. I feel something is missing and I can't put my finger on it and maybe someone with fresh eyes will look at it and know.
Overall, I feel I missed the mark this summer and wasted precious, beautiful time but that being said I liked the medium I found. Paper cut-outs give you two options- positive or negative space, none of this shading and layering mess. Reducing my color palette to nil and working with an easy to find, easy to manipulate medium were good ideas. The actual compositions of the finished works were not so good. These pieces are not very strong, I think, compared to what I know I'm capable of doing and the only feeling I have about them is empty handed-ness. I have not armed myself well for critique. I stand before the barbed tongues and searching eyes with only a few scraps of paper to defend myself. I would give myself a B- for the M and the big Cosette and a solid, well deserved C for Little Cosette because that piece I feel is the weakest.