(Bring On)The Night / Lost in the Woods, (Buffy poster art)

[red_satin_doll]

What do you do if you're trying to make icons for the upcoming round of btvsats20in20 and feeling horribly uninspired? AND you've been feeling exposed and tender the last several months, as your skin has been partly scraped away? If you're me, you go back to a fanart you made two months ago (just after Round 3 of 20in20), tinker with it a bit and decide you're finally ready to show it off:

(teaser image)

The Night/Lost in the Woods (click all images below to enlarge)



ETA 01/03/15 Thank you rbfvid for rec'ing my art at buffyversetop5!

I forgot to mention earlier that the trees in the background are a photograph I took of the woods around my yard at night, adjusted for color and saturation.

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Warm palette or cool palette? I like them both.

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This piece has three "godparents":  It was inspired specifically by some comments pickamix made about Buffy's wounds some time back that got me thinking about my own swirl of fuzzy feelings that I'm reluctant to examine. What IS going on when I look at Buffy in this moment? Sympathy of course, a desire to tuck a blanket around her in a "motherly" way; self-identification for my own psyche and wanting her to have the things I feel I don't (comfort, sympathy, nourishment.) But - is there a sensual component as well? Auto-erotica, masochism turned outward into sadism? All of the above? Is that unhealthy or merely human?



Hard to sort out what it all means. Easier to just make the art.

The line of text comes from Morphine's song "The Night"(Lila), which also inspired some of my Tara icons in Round 3. It's really a perfect fit for the women of the Buffyverse in general, all of them ordinary and extraordinary all at once; but I've identified that song with Buffy most especially ever since I watched the series: "You're a folk tale / the unexplainable...."

This is also dedicated to bone_dry1013 for the many, many enjoyable hours (and I do mean hours) we spent last year talking about our mutual love for Buffy on her blog, dissecting her psyche, her pains and burdens with a fine tooth comb. It does feel a bit like sadism, somehow, when I love her so much; how can it be so comforting and discomforting all at once?



One of the most disconcerting things about this image is that when I lightened the screencap, which was quite dark, I really saw how odd Sarah's eyes look, each one focused in a slightly different direction. How is that possible, even? I have no idea but I can think of few images from American tv in which someone looks more truly injured, and utterly lost.  In fact it's the complete opposite to the previous of image of Buffy in that episode, unconscious on the ground after her fight with the Ubervamp, blood spattered across her face and yet looking impossibly glamorous.

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I'd considered adding images of other girls throughout the series, or specifically focused on S7, but I preferred for once to keep this relatively uncluttered. The trees in the background are my own photograph taken in my yard and that I've used before in icons but never in a larger piece.  I added the lyric fragment after I saw the "bar" of light that the filter provided across Buffy's face; serendipity. I adore old-fashioned typewriter fonts and the fact that this is "rough around the edges" makes it a perfect fit for the image of Buffy.


I made other versions that were cropped more tightly, cutting off the bottom, but decided I preferred to leave a little "breathing room" around Buffy visually. I also made lighter, brighter versions but I felt the background patterns competed too much with the image of Buffy. I also had a go at something on "meta", Buffy's monologue from Becoming, Pt2 superimposed over the image. I'm not sure it really works the way I wanted. (Going back to the original typewriter font might have been a better idea?)

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I have no idea what that stuff that looks like lettering in the upper right corners of these is. (It's not text.) It seems to be a combination of the color filters I used, the tree image, and Joyce's curtains plus a  bit of sharpening. A "pattern" popped out and I liked the mysterious/ambiguous quality of it.


Tell me what you think of all this - the art, my psyche - , while I fix Miss Summers a hot meal. Civilized concrit and feedback is warmly appreciated.

ETA: wicked_awards Nominees 2015 - THANK YOU for the nominations!
#1 Best Banner
#4 Best Wallpaper