My entry for this weeks Art Mix-up contest hosted by @lilyraabe is part of a larger project I am working on. If you are interested you can check out my earlier post about it

@wildempress/story-illustration-work-in-progress

I am working on the characters now and playing with ideas of how to create them. I made two versions of this Character who I am calling Arkin though the name may change in the future.

Here is my first attempt, painted with water color and cut out and sewn with a needle and thread for the joints. Then I scanned the paper doll into my computer.

I didn't really like it so I decided to make a different version. This time instead of using one kind of paper and painting it I cut out the parts from different papers to get different colors textures and patterns.

I scanned this paper doll and finished the details in photo shop by clone stamping parts of the vest and shoes for the eyes, and selecting areas of the skin and adding a curve adjustment to darken it for shadows.

I liked it better but wouldn't be sure until I put him into one of the scenes. I selected the paper doll and copy/pasted it into a scene I had previously finished. Once there I selected the part of his body that would be shadowed by the light of the will-o-wisp and feathered the selection quite a bit before using another curves adjustment layer to create the light and shadow effect on the paper doll coming from the will-o-wisp. The full scene is above, here I have cropped in so you can see in more detail.

My usual art forms are oil painting and photography so mixing papercraft and digital art has been an interesting experiment. I find the process slower because I am not quite sure what will work and what won't but I have enough over lapping skills to confidently play around at least.

If you are an artist be sure to check out@lilyraabe/art-mix-up-contest-or-deadline-extended-thru-friday hosted by @lilyraabe and get your submissions in!! Can't wait to see what else gets added to this contest!