Shadow and Light

What I really love about my projects involving shadow and light is the "romance" of it all. I am not sure if others feel the same way as I do about shadows and light, but it really resonates—on a very deep, theatrical level. Light and shadow can put us into very different frames of mind and emotion.

I like to think of this fascination with shadows as something as old as the caveman part of us; the torch light flickering over the animals they had painted on the cave walls made them seem alive. Shadows and light giving life to 2 dimensional figures. That is what I hope to do today.

By the way, you might enjoy this stop motion animation I made of the making of the Caves of Lascaux




            

A few of the shadowboxes I have made.

"

"Bird in the Bush" shadowbox:




This is a shadowbox that I made expressly for a lady who loves to watch the birds. I chose the colors because I thought that they would be very calming, the way watching birds can be.





This is a shadowbox that I made for a little girl. Her dad told me she would want  "something with princesses." I remember back to when I was a young girl and loved to swing, loved flowers and butterflies...and this is the papercut that I came up with.

And the full effect with LEDs:

How I Begin

When I am creating a shadowbox for a customer, I am usually given a specific theme. If the customer doesn't have a particular vision, I start a few sketches and see what works. Sometimes a figure it too complicated to work in shadow. I recently had a bit of a problem with a Batman shadowbox. A big part of Batman is his cape. He uses it to obscure himself, as a hang-glider, and parachute. Check out the solution that I came up with: