paper illustrator / photographer / faith cheerleader
Sea Lighting
The whole process is: sketch, create vectors, cut/shape/glue paper, stage light, photograph, retouch. It took about 4 hours for this one image.
Choosing to illustrate with constraints, I used a half circle as a basis to create all the sea life.
The main light, from a flashlight, was above camera and behind the subject. The light passed through a tub of water causing the ripples on the paper (diagram on left).
This image is a composite. I shot the still-life with the flashlight pointing at different points so I could capture the light's reflections on different parts of the paper. This way I got to choose the most visually appeasing ripples and choose their intensity.