Guardian of Lost Souls

Between this world and the next they hover aimlessly, lost but not alone. Some carry the sadness of their departure, others harbor hate and foster wrath over their unjust end. In that fine membrane between worlds they hover under the guardian's watchful eye.
But who is he guarding? Us or them?

Those of you that follow my Instagram or Facebook already know this work, but I felt like sharing it here where I can get a bit crazy with detail shots ;)

This piece is definitely one of those 'a simple idea that escalated' cases.
It started with the skull, I wanted to see how dimensional I can get this paper die-cut, and I was really happy with the results. It's pretty amazing what some forming and ink can get out of flat paper!

I knew this skull deserved to be the center of something special, and from the beginning had the idea to have it's eyes glimmering wickedly  (muwahahaha), so I decided to use LED lights. If you're familiar with these light strings, you know that they are pretty long, so I started thinking how I can use the rest of the lights in the background and it came to me - ghosts!
I dug through my stash of Tim Holtz Paper Dolls and found all the 'disfigured' ones - they come cut out in detail, and every now and then the cutting isn't exact and something get cut off, you can see the girl and man in the photo bellow have part of their head missing. It's very rare to find a Paper Doll this off so it's lucky I have quite a stash ;)

 

 For the lighting to work the background has to be translucent, but not clear so the light is diffused. I used Tim Holtz's alcohol inks and pearls on acetate. The mica in the pearls makes them more opaque, so when the lights are off it kinda looks like shimmery dirt lol

 I twined the lights behind the "ghosts" and used hot glue to make sure they stay in place.

I wanted the frame to continue the vibe of the work, so I used some texture paste with stencils in different places to get interesting patterns and dimensions. Once dried I covered the paste with black acrylic paint and finally added some of Finnabair's metallic waxes for color and shine. 

I really like how it all came together in creepy-cool goodness. Finishing with lights-on-lights-off shots, hope you like this guy as much as I do :)