Making the moomin in my profile picture thread

Here's Tove Jansson's original drawing. He's swimming downwards, see? And the plant has eyes. I love how dark some of these illustrations are, about forest creatures in the night. I feel like he's a little uncertain about what he's doing. As are we all.

With arms and legs now.

Picking some colours that sort of evoke the same feeling as the cold dark sea. I'm not matching the colours exactly. I think light and shadow is part of what makes it all work anyway, and they sort of change with that. I love the strong green especially.

omfg this took four bloody hours and I got glue everywhere!

Here's where I think the other half of the swirl is going

Some bubbles

The sea

slimy things did crawl with legs

These dark little seaweed creatures are not stuck down yet; I want to try to hint at the sort of bush shape, and I'll need a bunch more of them. I'm just figuring out where they go.

So far I think this has been about 20 hours maybe. Half for the moomin, half for the other stuff.

Next time I would try cutting out his outline first, and then edging it with paper, instead of building him first. Cutting him out after the fact was difficult!

Half the seaweed guys in place, some plants and a fish. I think I made the fish a little too heavy! Maybe he should've been half-height? It's too late now!

This is roughly how I want the light.

The seaweed guys are hiding, but sort of curiously peeking around from under the swirly bit, see?

Hey do you like my cool scissors??

In practice you don't need them much. Most of the edges are torn, which might seem lazy but it's not!

It's more fiddly to tear the paper without accidentally creasing it. But the torn edges make for a smoother join, when you glue them down.

Rock fitting. I'm doing simple rocks! The grey paper I'm using for the background is a b'day card envelope my mother sent me, I don't have much of it.

I had wanted to crease & fold them to give geometric angles, but I can't make it work. You want good rocks? Follow @Bifanoland!

2nd rock layer goes like this. Two layers means this is sedimentary rock. har har

Conclusions so far:
- Thick paper, almost like card. Thicc!! Especially for the base, which warps a bit from the glue.
- Tiny glue! but every edge has to be covered, else light comes through the gaps
- Find curves end-first, let the middle relax
- Weigh stuff down while it dries

Composition rules seem to be per any media;
- Asymmetry good
- Don't complicate it (which I feel I have done here)
- Find lines & tension; balance over them
- Vary height. Cut strips down the middle to make them thinner! E.g. the swirl top-right, I should've made that shallower

I think I'm done! Squishing things flat before mounting it.

For framing things; keep the bottom margin a little wider than the top margin. It's the same reason the letter "O" overhangs the baseline slightly; it's optical correction to feel like the centre of gravity is balanced.

Done.
@MoominOfficial I hope you like it!

That's all! Thank you everybody for keeping me company, the feedback has been lovely company :) https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1302069396219731968