Big Bang Art 2013: Break the Key in the Rusted Lock
Title: Break the Key in the Rusted Lock
Author: st_salieri
Artist: on_verra
Genre: SPN - Gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 23,200
Summary: As a boy, Sam had always thought that books were doorways to different worlds. He never expected to find one that literally was. A mysterious volume discovered while Sam prepares for his trials causes the lives of the Winchester brothers and a librarian from South Dakota to intersect, and their meeting might lead to the end of the world.
Frontispiece:
Story Illustration with text from Helen's Journal:
Section Headings:
Notes & Thanks:
This is my first time doing Art for Big Bang! Or any kind of fan art really! But I participated as an author a few years back and really wanted to see how the other half live, so to speak. Luckily, I got to work with the wonderful, brilliant, talented, and patient st_salieri, whose story inspired me beyond the telling of it. I mostly read Sam/Dean and assumed I would choose accordingly, but when I saw the claim summary for this story in the SPN Gen section -- Mysterious book? Librarian? Spacetime? Lair of the Men of Letters? -- I could not resist its siren call.
I like to make stuff out of paper, but decided to go a different route here and do digital photo collage. I realized at some point that my images were looking a little like McKean's early Sandman covers or something, but hey, I guess one could have worse influences! All of the photos I used are my own (except of course for the S8 screencap of Sam and Dean in the lair of the Men of Letters, and their half-faces in the frontispiece, which came from a couple of different SPN promo shots). I took my pictures deep in the bowels of my place of work, you see, for I am also a librarian. ;)
The hand reaching down towards The Red Book is that of a very gallant coworker. I was going to use it only as a point of reference and swap it out for a more feminine hand, but when st_salieri saw my draft, she mentioned that this was the skin tone she had envisioned for Helen. I decided then to leave it as-is. Better for Helen to have slightly masculine hands than to be whitewashed, no?!
The non-Latin characters in the section headers, as well as the obscured characters on the front of The Red Book, are supposedly Enochian.
Thanks again to st_salieri for being so nice to work with, being such an amazing writer, and producing a story that haunts my dreams still. Thanks also to the Big Bang Mods, wendy and thehighwaywoman, for once again organizing this challenge. Thanks, finally, to any of you out there taking the time to look at this Art Post as well as reading the fic which it is meant to accompany. I hope you like it! Go read the fic now!!!
Author: st_salieri
Artist: on_verra
Genre: SPN - Gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 23,200
Summary: As a boy, Sam had always thought that books were doorways to different worlds. He never expected to find one that literally was. A mysterious volume discovered while Sam prepares for his trials causes the lives of the Winchester brothers and a librarian from South Dakota to intersect, and their meeting might lead to the end of the world.
Frontispiece:
Story Illustration with text from Helen's Journal:
Section Headings:
Notes & Thanks:
This is my first time doing Art for Big Bang! Or any kind of fan art really! But I participated as an author a few years back and really wanted to see how the other half live, so to speak. Luckily, I got to work with the wonderful, brilliant, talented, and patient st_salieri, whose story inspired me beyond the telling of it. I mostly read Sam/Dean and assumed I would choose accordingly, but when I saw the claim summary for this story in the SPN Gen section -- Mysterious book? Librarian? Spacetime? Lair of the Men of Letters? -- I could not resist its siren call.
I like to make stuff out of paper, but decided to go a different route here and do digital photo collage. I realized at some point that my images were looking a little like McKean's early Sandman covers or something, but hey, I guess one could have worse influences! All of the photos I used are my own (except of course for the S8 screencap of Sam and Dean in the lair of the Men of Letters, and their half-faces in the frontispiece, which came from a couple of different SPN promo shots). I took my pictures deep in the bowels of my place of work, you see, for I am also a librarian. ;)
The hand reaching down towards The Red Book is that of a very gallant coworker. I was going to use it only as a point of reference and swap it out for a more feminine hand, but when st_salieri saw my draft, she mentioned that this was the skin tone she had envisioned for Helen. I decided then to leave it as-is. Better for Helen to have slightly masculine hands than to be whitewashed, no?!
The non-Latin characters in the section headers, as well as the obscured characters on the front of The Red Book, are supposedly Enochian.
Thanks again to st_salieri for being so nice to work with, being such an amazing writer, and producing a story that haunts my dreams still. Thanks also to the Big Bang Mods, wendy and thehighwaywoman, for once again organizing this challenge. Thanks, finally, to any of you out there taking the time to look at this Art Post as well as reading the fic which it is meant to accompany. I hope you like it! Go read the fic now!!!