BTS: In Her Tongue Is the Law of Kindness

Last week I released my newest piece, In Her Tongue is the Law of Kindness. This week I wanted to share all of the behind the scenes details, including a short video of the costume and prop creation.

 

The story for this piece goes back to Christmas Eve morning, 2014, when I was the only one both dumb and desperate enough to go into work. Being an administrative assistant, whose role was to help anyone who needed it, the noticeable lack of people in the office needing help that morning meant that I had a lot of downtime. However, as we’ve all found out by now, sitting and doing nothing is not in my vocabulary. Instead of being entirely useless, I took that time to design and sketch out five different costumes for my Daughters of the King series.

 

 

For this piece in particular, I wanted a deep blue coronation gown. I thought it was fitting for the idea behind the value of Divine Nature, which is that we are children of a Heavenly King and therefore Heavenly princes and princesses (the inner fantasy-book-nerd in me loves the thought of that). I knew, though, that there was no way I would be able to afford a coronation gown, of all things, so I decided I would make it myself.

 

I began looking for a pattern that I could work with to create this dress, and kept an eye out at the local thrift stores for some blue fabric, which is the color representing Divine Nature. After a couple weeks of searching I was (almost miraculously) able to find both the fabric and the pattern, just before I moved halfway across the country to Boston, Massachusetts.

 

 

Moving cross country meant I had no contacts and no models, which frustratingly put the work on this image, and the rest of the series, on hold for quite a few months. It wasn’t for another four months, in late October of last year, that I was able to find someone interested in working with me, a young girl named Eli who went to my church.

 

 

We coordinated on a time to meet up for a casual shoot, just to get to know each other. I always like to do this when I work with a new model, just so we can get a feel for each other before working on the final image, which usually involves dramatic (and often very fanciful) styling and posing. For someone who has never modeled, I think that can be a little intimidating sometimes, so I like to give them a chance to warm up to me and the camera.

 

When we met up in Boston Common for the first time in late October, I knew Eli was the perfect fit. I can remember thinking the whole time “I hope she doesn’t think my idea for this series is super weird and will run away!” Thankfully I didn’t scare her off, and I’m so glad! She’s absolutely gorgeous and really…. She’s perfect for this piece.

 

 

With our first initial shoot out of the way, I started work on the dress, as I now had an idea of how to make it look best on Eli. I spent the next few weeks leading up to Christmas sewing away, as well as creating the scepter she is holding in her hand in the image. I’m sure it comes as no surprise when I say that I decided to make the scepter myself after seeing that my only options in purchasing one were far too “beauty pageant” for my liking (a million rhinestones, feathers… sometimes entirely pink…).

 

 

Not knowing exactly how I was going to make this scepter, I also didn’t want to have to go hunting through a million different stores. I didn’t even know what supplies I needed in the first place! Instead, I looked around the house and decided that kitchen skewers (as in the kind you use for barbecuing meat), jewelry wire, buttons, a plastic, heart-shaped Christmas ornament, and a LOT of hot glue would do perfectly for this project. Watch the video below to see how I did it:

 

 

After the craziness of the holidays calmed down, I was finally able to finish my prep work for the image and arranged for Eli to come over one Saturday in early February. We sat in my office with the morning sunlight streaming through the windows while I did her hair and makeup. I think the office may be my favorite room in the house. It’s only about eight by twelve feet, but there are four windows in the room taking up an entire wall, allowing light to stream in all day long. I love to sit in there on Saturday mornings and just soak in the morning.

 

 

Once she was dressed, we walked into my makeshift studio, which is currently my dining room. With all the furniture pushed to the side, the windows covered up, and the wires to my lighting equipment running throughout the confined space, it was a bit of a haphazard set-up (I’m sure to the onlooker, this part of the creative process looked quite strange, as I had to sit on the couch in the living room next door, shooting through the archway between the two rooms to get the full frame shot).

 

…Well… I was worried about ruining the magic with explaining all my symbolism of this piece in my last post, but I’m sure that if that post didn’t, my description of my “studio space” just did. Sometimes you have to work with what you have though, and make the best of it…

 

 

In the end, it didn’t take long to get the shot I needed. We spent about thirty minutes in the room, making only slight adjustments to the pose I had envisioned in my head, until we felt like we had enough options to work with. It’s a little crazy to me how much time and effort can go into something that doesn’t even last an hour, but really, as a piece of art, I think in the end it becomes timeless, like a frozen memory.

 

 

After the shoot, I spent quite a lot of time on the image in post-processing. I ended up moving some things around, such as the frame, which I had wanted to be hanging on the wall, but couldn’t because the “wall” was actually just a black backdrop with about a foot of empty space behind it. Made of solid wood and gold plaster, this frame was far too heavy to hang from the cloth.

 

**As a side note, I actually found this frame in the neighbor’s trash one day while out running before work. I am convinced that people here in Boston either lack vision or hate old things. Or both. I’ve also found a set of solid wood bookshelves and an antique sewing machine, still in it’s original table. I’d say I enjoy trash looting here in Boston almost as much as thrift shopping!**

 

 

I also had to add a few props in photoshop as well, as there were certain things I wanted in the picture that I simply could not get in-camera. The table and curtain behind her were two things that I simply didn’t have space for. I also didn’t own a table or curtain that would have worked, but thankfully photoshop can always help with that problem.

 

In the end, while this photo did take a lot more work in photoshop than I had anticipated, I’m very pleased with the result and am really excited to add this to the other four pieces in this series. It feels wonderful to be one step closer to finishing this project!