Unfortunately, it’s not the first time he’s had to do this.
Season 9: Captives
Tag: Sam Winchester
Supernatural Fiber Arts Project Diary: Contemplation
Oh, man, this one gave me fits. I’m still not fully satisfied with it.
I have a tendency to fall into a “Grand Plans” mindset where I’ve got all kinds of ideas that sound good on an intellectual level, but in reality just end up muddying things.
I knew I wanted to evoke energy, a sense of clashing and binding that contrasts sharply with the separate and contemplative nature of the original screen cap.
I did the usual bumbling about in photoshop. Initially, I was considering a green theme, given that I had blue, gold, and red themes already.
But, nothing “popped.”
I thought maybe black/white and then introducing color to specific parts to highlight them. I thought it might evoke being drained of color and vitality and the only energy and life being the connection between.
I dunno. Green against the black and white didn’t accomplish that, however.
At the same time I was casting about for inspiration for what exactly I’d be adding to the pic. I looked at nebulae, fire, and angel wings and finally ran into this pic:
Isn’t that great? As far as I can tell, it’s called “Source of human power – Angel" by allanwalkey.
So much energy in the line work. A couple things struck me about the use of color, too. One was the use of gradation of warm colors. I’ve been wanting to do something with halation for a while. See how the gradients of color set next to each other make them seem to glow?
There’s a reason why and it all has to do with how our brains process color and contrasts. See where the colors butt up against each other? Look for a faint brightness along the edge in the lighter color and a faint darkness along the edge in the darker color. That doesn’t really exist. In reality, each bar is a solid color. Our brain pumps up the volume on contrasts because edges are so important in being able to see how this thing we’re looking at is a whole object, set aside and different from the stuff around it.
So, I hoped that using a gradient of color like this would give it some energy.
And then I ran into this quote from wikipedia: Complementary colors are pairs of colors which, when combined, cancel each other out. … When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast for those particular two colors.
Which I thought was all kinds of appropriate for Sam and Dean’s relationship. When combined, cancel each other out, but when placed next to each other create strongest contrasts. That really fit with the theme of Ties that Bind. Bound together, with both the negative and positive connotations of that connection.
I ran some tests.
I struggled to get a focal point. I was noodling around on the internet, looking up meiosis and mitosis on the inspirational thought of growth and separation. I ran into Fluorescence Microscopy. OOOF!
I liked the sense of this cocoon around the action.
Here’s my first attempt at it.
meh. I didn’t much like the rays, either. There’s just too much going on. I was hoping to evoke the complexity of clashing and binding by where the rays come together in the middle, but it’s just a mess. No focal point. Bleh! Grand-Plan-itis.
I ended up cutting away the brown and replacing it with couching – so texture but not enough to draw the eye away from the middle.
Took out the lighter rays close to the guys. I loved them, but it drew the eye away from the middle. Replaced the middle with a more even "explosive” set of rays in the lighter range of colors.
So, this is the end product. It’s an improvement, buuuuut. Still lacking something. I may cut away the brown couching and replace it with a web of straight dark threads, browns at the bottom grading up to black on top to give it depth. Maybe it’ll highlight the sense cocooning and claustrophobia. We’ll see.
Btw: This is what happens every time I try to take pics. Lil Ms. Diva Kitty herself.
High resolution versions of The Red Mark and the other artwork can be found on imgur.
Supernatural Fiber Arts Project Diary: Embrace
Supernatural Fiber Arts Project Diary: Sam’s Blue Period
I’ve been enjoying reading fic written for this year’s SPNJ2BB when it caught my attention that this submission (A Little Bear and His Wolf) was accompanied by embroidered artwork by Meesasometimes. What followed was a brain implosion that derailed all other projects.
Unpopular opinion time:
I actually kind of really like Sam’s rusty bacon shirt.
SO DO I FRIEND
the-megalosaurus replied to your post:Unpopular opinion time: I actually kind of really…
peanutbutterandbananasandwichs likes it too!
foolscapper replied to your post:Unpopular opinion time: I actually kind of really…
I… I agree. I even put it on Thor in a comic.
TEAM RUSTY BACON SHIRT.
Yay! I like the rusty bacon shirt, too:
Unpopular fandom opinion time: I like this shirt.
Though I confess my affection for this shirt has them all beat:
Supernatural Fiber Arts Project Diary: Sam’s Blue Period
I’ve been enjoying reading fic written for this year’s SPNJ2BB when it caught my attention that this submission (A Little Bear and His Wolf) was accompanied by embroidered artwork by Meesasometimes. What followed was a brain implosion that derailed all other projects.
First step, photo manipulation:
Here’s the base photo:
With a darkened background and addition of lighting and contrast. I can’t tell you how long that took. Let’s just say that Photoshop and I are not friends and leave it at that.
And then many and various attempts to manipulate color:
Nope.
Nope.
Eegads. Just, no.
Before settling on:
Finally!
On to putting it in fiber.
I ran into Lauren DiCioccio’s work while looking for inspiration.
All kinds of fun things happening with color and texture. You can find more of her work here.
I thought I might give her approach of doing a segment at a time a try.
Rejected embroidery attempt #1:
Yuck. This attempt was printed on card stock fused to black silk. I’ve rejected it for a variety of reasons, one of which is because it’s just flat and uninteresting without the variety of color DiCioccio uses, but also, so not worth the effort of trying to push a needle through cardboard.
So, I scrapped that. Found this product: Silk inkjet printable fabric sheets
Rejected embroidery attempt #2:
Completely forgot just how sheer silk is and promptly attempted fusing it to an underlying fabric to give it strength. Ha! No pictures of that failure. There’s definitely a loss of definition when printing on fabric to begin with. This just looked like I dropped it in a mud puddle.
So, on to my next attempt, which involved lots of very fine pins and a steady hand sewing the sheer printed charmeuse onto a more solid raw silk weave background.
Looked around for other inspiration for embroidered portraits and rediscovered Cayce Zavaglia’s work:
Isn’t that gorgeous? You can find more of her work here.
That led me to embroidery attempt #3, currently in process here:
Sam’ Blue Period
Zavaglia has a painterly approach to her work which I can in no way match. I know absolutely nothing about using layers of color in that way. My medium usually involves taking two dimensions and manipulating them into a third, like ceramics, silver-smithing/jewelry making, and many and various forms of fiber. I suck at drawing and painting. My attempts are far too literal and bound to the concrete when I attempt to work in one set of dimensions to pull it off.
That said, I’m learning a ton about the kinds of stitches that work best to get the texture I want (a very loose and random herringbone, btw). The glow of silk contrasted with how the stitching catches both light and shadow is growing on me. The material is a joy to work with. I am also growing more confident in my ability to layer colors atop each other rather than relying on a paint by numbers kind of an approach.
My next challenge is to fill in a whole section with one base color and add other colors atop it to highlight and shade. I think I’ll do that with Sam’s forehead. It’s a smooth and broad enough plane to be rather forgiving, I think. 🙂
After I finish Sam, then I’m moving on to Dean.
High resolution versions of The Red Mark and the other artwork can be found on imgur.
The diary for Contemplation can be found here.
Here’s the diary for The Red Mark
This is something that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while, and I think I’m finally in a place where I can express it specifically.
I came to Supernatural in late Season 1 because it was a story about two brothers who saw family and each other through the lens of their father’s values. John defined the family and the roles that were served in it. In the first few seasons we saw two brothers discovering that they weren’t quite what they had thought, that there was more to them that they could discover about each other once they were out from under John’s authority. They were starting to reconnect. It gave me hope in the belief that we can heal each other. That we can remain true to who we are, be valued for it; that we don’t have to sacrifice large parts of ourselves in order to be accepted and loved.
Whether or not you agree that Dean’s behavior has been abusive, at some point in the last season his behavior tipped over a very scary line. While I can sympathize with his heat of the moment decision to more or less violate Sam’s DNR wishes, I have a much harder time with the gas lighting, ongoing violation of Sam’s body and memory, assumption of control over Sam’s will by not allowing him to decide, and only looking for a way to overpower Gadreel’s control when DEAN decided it that what he wanted out of the situation wasn’t enough to justify the escalating risk. That’s just far too much of a pattern of treating Sam like an object and less like a person.
And that assumption that you are something that belongs to me, that it is okay to ask you to sacrifice your autonomy to preserve this relationship is one of the primary beliefs that lay the foundation for abuse. Ironically, it’s also the belief that underlies what John asked Dean to do, to sacrifice essential parts of who he was in order to preserve the family. It’s how John defined family for Dean and why Dean defines family the way he does. It is both why Sam and Dean have survived this long and why they are as broken as they are. So many images of double-edged swords in this season. I can only hope this is the reason why we’re seeing them.
But at this point, two things have happened that discourage me. In the past couple seasons some of the lessons have been quite the opposite of what we were being shown early on.
Sam experienced the one thing that so many of us who have been physically or emotionally abused fear. That if we speak up and insist on our right to be ourselves, to not allow ourselves to be violated to meet someone else’s needs, it will destroy the family. What happened in season 9, is that essentially Sam sticks up for his autonomy, his right to hold people responsible for facilitating his physical and psychological violation, and his family is destroyed. Dean goes off the rails, spirals off into despair, shuts Sam down and out, and puts himself in a situation with no support and gets himself killed.
As well, whether the writers intended it or not, now we have season 10 where Sam’s POV, his willingness to fight for the right to not be lied to, to call Dean out when Dean needs someone to call him out, in the same way that every other female character this season has called Dean out, has essentially disappeared. In it’s place, Sam is being incredibly emotionally supportive of Dean. That’s lovely, in it’s way, but it’s coming of the cost of Sam’s autonomy, again.
It’s like we’re rehashing the message that the best way to heal someone who has done awful things to you is to just accept them and love on them. WHICH IS SO WRONG. This is exactly the message that someone who has been abused gets all the time. It’s the message that YOU are the one who is responsible for the relationship and the psychological state of the other person in it. That hope that maybe you can do something about it and heal the other person. Maybe if I could just love you enough, put aside my needs, thoughts, and feelings enough, you’ll be healed. It’s essentially the very belief that John reinforced as being the foundation of family that lead to where we are. You must sacrifice essential parts of yourself in order to be in this relationship. And if you don’t, the family will be destroyed.
Does Dean need to forgive himself? Oh yes, very much so. But he also needs to be held responsible. Does Dean have a huge emotional hole that needs healing because he sacrificed so much of who he was for so long? Yep, but if it comes at the cost of someone else’s autonomy, then we’ve just robbed Peter to pay Paul and changed nothing of significance.
In Darkness and In Light:
Both brothers in yellow, red, and grey/black shirts.
One shirt is painted darker shades, one lighter.
One brother in the shadows, another in the light.
Visual motifs: Use of specific flowers
filleretive reblogged your post and added:
Ooh, relevant to my last post about Adaptation…
Perhaps, or perhaps not. I think you got to the meat of the matter in your meta without it, that you need to look deeper and that there are multiple layers hidden here beneath the flower imagery. And I like what you say about errors the authors make as informed by their flawed and limited interpretation of the narrative and that many things, including subtext, may also be true. I’m afraid I’m not familiar enough with Adaptation and The Orchid Thief to comment with anything specific about what you’ve said beyond that. 🙂
I’ve seen Supernatural do that before, use both flowers in general but a certain flower type in specific to evoke certain themes. Once was back in Season 4 with the Siren in Sex and Violence. The flower they used then was hyacinths, which were strategically placed to 1) throw you off the scent and on the surface imply that the doctor was the Siren but 2) below that to both imply that something was secret and yet to be revealed and 3) evoke the myth of Hyacinth.
Hyacinth was a youth who was loved and killed out of jealousy by the greek gods. Which fits with the Siren’s goal to force people to kill that which they love the most. I think he was jealous of their love and attention in the sense that he wanted it ALL for his own, for it to be proven to him.
What I also thought was interesting was that the writers’ entwined that theme with all the Disney character names as the aliases assumed by the Siren. Jasmine, Belle, Aurora, Ariel – all children’s fantasies of the grown up world. The Siren promised relationships in which only the lovers’ needs mattered, in which they liked the same music, cars, way time is spent together, etc. The Siren promised the first blush of love that Dr. Cara referred to, that is a fantasy of the relationship, rather than a mature and fully adult relationship.
It highlighted for me just how much that kind of emotional mirroring had been lacking in Dean and Sam’s early life, and how it left a hole that adult relationships with their differences of opinions and needs can’t really fill. That theme and its ripple effects, I think, is still operating even today in season 10.
Actual closed captioning quote.
Hearseeno 