First Paper Sculpt inspired by Brittney Lee

I've been talking about doing a paper sculpt for a looong time now, and finally I had both time and a reason to do one! This is about 8x8 inches square and took about 15 hours--5 planning and 10 cutting and pasting.

A good friend just returned from a trip to India, and I made this piece to commemorate her experiences there. The sari in the piece is based on one she wore in India.

You all know about Brittney Lee, of course...right? Well if not, please go check out her amazing art!

She is one of my favorite artists--possibly THE favorite artist, and her fresh, fun, and beautiful art never ceases to amaze me. Her paper sculpting pieces are the sole reason I'm interested in this medium! I feel so blessed to have gotten to meet her and see her do a live paper-sculpting demo at CTN, and I definitely intend to do more pieces, and soon! A whole new world...

Here are two different lighting situations, so you can see the dimensionality of it: (OR mostly because I couldn't decide which lighting I liked best...hahaha!)

Some detail shots:

 

And finally, the Photoshop sketch I made in order to test out different combinations of color, saturation, and value before launching into the final. I had the most trouble choosing the border and background colors--I wanted a border for depth, but I didn't want it to draw attention away from the figure. I ended up using all similar greens (more so than I intended--the selection of green cardstock at the craft store was not up to par!) to allow the eye to go right to the figure.