A Study in Paper #7: Холмс и Ватсон

[ldhenson]

So aeroferret continued to feed my crafting addiction by giving me a shiny new craft knife ♥ Well, of course I had to put it to good use.

A paper-cutting for the Russian Sherlock Holmes series.


Thumbnail:






Despite being a fairly straightforward design, this one took an entire week to finish (by contrast, I did #6 in a single evening). The tricky bit wasn't the actual cutting process--which, granted, still took a long time--but rather the planning, pulling all the elements together while still keeping the central portrait of Holmes and Watson clean and simple. Sometimes things just take a while to coalesce.





But I'm very happy with the final result.

Plus it's a nice complement to my Russian!SH pendant :-)





And one more pic, in different lighting:





Cut from cardstock. A little over 6.5" x 10.25", before folding.


X-posted to cox_and_co (here), craftgrrl (here), geekcrafts (here), my dA, 221b_bakerst (here)

Comments

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thank you! The text was a late addition since it took me ages to find a font with the right widths and so on...quite an adventure when it's in a language you don't speak :-) But I found one at last.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much!

Clearly you have an awesome professor with good taste :-)

[alek-morse.livejournal.com]

I have already come here, on this post, and examined this remarkable artifact with a great pleasure. Finally I have time to say the admiration of your work and tell some thoughts.

But at first a concrete question: do the big pictures show 100% the size of things?

First, I must to say that you have surprisingly cached the essence of the Livanov/Solomin series – a paper and scissors expressed the main idea of this film, I think, and, in most «iconic» form: both Holmes and Watson talk at a fireplace. The filmmakers especially emphasized the fireplace scene, expressing it in the most symbolical form. But your work, in any sense, in some has outdone this symbolic element, after all it is shot in realistic way, and your artifact is an emblem in which a decorative-constructive elements of fireplace portrait a “window” yet, where both Holmes and Watson images are inserted into. It turns out that both Holmes and Watson are not just near the fireplace, and as though against a window of their apartment-fortress. (It was "secondly".)

In short, awesome!

And thirdly: in my opinion, the artistic idea, the material and technology (selected by you) are extremely organic to the art form of the Livanov/Solomin series, each episode that begins with application, installation – a play of letters and words.

[milij-rizhik.livejournal.com]

Love them, love it. Thank you!)

[arkennes.livejournal.com]

Oh wow that's brilliant! I love the Russian writing, the banisters at the top and clean design! I would actually buy this if I saw it :)

[kornet-azarov.livejournal.com]

It's fantastic! You're miracle-worker - creating such miracles just with scissors. Special gratitude for Russian letters and "shadows" photo:o)

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Amazing and beautiful! I really love it. I love the shadow, too.

What's the new craft knife like?

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words!

The cutting is larger than shown in the photos. Before I folded it, it was slightly larger than 6.5 x 10.25 inches, or about 166mm x 261mm. I mainly cut this with a knife, although I did use scissors for the small round knobs at the top of the frame.

Your description is great, and you're right, and the symbolism is definitely there. I'm fond of those fireplace scenes, and it's very central to their friendship, quite literally hearth and home. Plus, I based their portraits from a scene in «Смертельная схватка» when they're traveling, so there's also the idea that even when they're far from home, the thought of home is not that far away...if you wanted to read into it that much, that is :-) As the artist it made me happy to hear your thoughts on this.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much!

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you! I'm especially glad you like the banisters since I rarely have the patience to cut repeated patterns like that. But I wanted them and I'm happy with how they came out :-)

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! I don't speak Russian myself so I had to check and check again that the letters were right. Sometimes different fonts were confusing, but it was fun to learn.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I sometimes have to wait quite a long while to get the lighting right for the shadows, but when it works out, it's all worth it.

It's a Slice brand knife, with a ceramic blade. I'm not entirely used to it yet, as the blade is so tiny I sometimes can't clearly see the line I'm following. However, the small blade size is really nice for cutting curves. I swap between it and my older knives depending on what works best at the moment.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Wow, a ceramic blade! I've never used one of those. I didn't know they made them for crafts. I'd heard about them as kitchen knives. Neat!

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

I didn't know, either. You can only use it for paper/card since the blade is so small (it won't cut deeply) but I'm quite excited that it's ceramic!

[notfromvenus.livejournal.com]

I love it! I love the Russian series (was just watching one of them this morning actually), and this is lovely and really captures them.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much! I hadn't seen it in a while myself, but I really enjoyed re-watching episodes to get ideas for this project.

[remcontessa.livejournal.com]

amazing

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thanks muchly!

[muzalewsky.livejournal.com]

+1000

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[neko-zoi.livejournal.com]

красота!

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

спасибо!