Superman Pocket Shrine*
by aisling d'art ©2006This is a pocket shrine to Superman. It's in the lid of a Pringle's potato chip canister. You know, those clear-plastic snap-on lids.
My vision was a night scene of Superman flying over Metropolis, with a reference to Clark Kent's
day job at The Daily Planet.
How to make a pocket art shrine like this
I nicked the lid in a V shape at the sides, so the lid will fold.
I punched four holes with my Fiskars 1/16" punch, two on each side, and "sewed" embroidery floss through them to hold the lid at a right-angle fold. (For a close-up and more details to make this, see Superman shrine - hardware.)
The background of the top and bottom are watercolors on plain art paper (Dr. Ph. Martin's concentrated watercolors). Both the stars and the streetlights are dotted with acrylic paints. I used a very fine waterproof pen to draw the black, ruled lines on the bottom/flat half of the shrine, indicating streets.
The Superman image is from the comics, digitally altered to fit. Yes, there are two Superman images: One is glued directly to the background. The second one hovers over him, on double-stick foam tape, to give a 3D effect.
The Daily Planet building is actually cut out of a Superman comic book and glued (with Rollataq--a specialized glue) to the background. There's a small NYC skyline cut out and applied to the background, too. I found it online, but it could be reduced from any NYC tourist brochure, too.
The buildings are from old images of New York City, which I digitally reduced and colored. The tallest one is the Empire State Building. (Do a Lycos Image Search using those words, to locate a graphic you like.)
They're mounted on and supported with cardboard, and pushed through slits in the street graphic, so they stand up. The street graphic was glued into the Pringle's lid after adding these buildings.
The colors are brilliant, and this little shrine could sit nicely on a nightstand or desk.
Backstory:
During my previous marriage, we had a full-sized Superman shrine in our house. Superman was one of my husband's idols. The big shrine filled a bookcase shelf in our dining room. It contained statues, figurines, first-edition novels, comics, and other collectible ephemera related to Superman.
My idea for a Superman pocket shrine emerged, in living color, at 3 o'clock in the morning. I was already tweaking graphics with my computer, when the sun came up.
I was thrilled with this pocket shrine, and it was a present for my husband. He got custody of it in the divorce.
*Superman and all related characters and names are the trademarks of DC Comics, (c)1996. All rights
reserved.
The art on this page represents fan art, not any item offered for sale or trade.