Making a custom Cucoloris to create dramatic portraits

After being inspired by Sophie Palmer’s portrait depicting boredom with a Catholic priest inside the confession booth, below, I decided to try my hand at projecting divine patterns on model Alex Mitchell’s face by making a custom Cucoloris.

Un peu de backstage.. Ma série de portrait continue, avec l’aide ce week-end de @stephanechaperot. Pas très grand et pas encore aménagé ce nouvel espace que j’ai pour shooter certaines de mes projets, mais parfait pour ne plus avoir d’excuses.. #conceptualphotography #concept #buildingsets #set #homestudio #studiomaison #portrait #backstage #bts #famousbtsmag #iso1200 #photographeoise #elinchrom #deepocta #beautydish #bolbeauté #godox #ad600bm #photoshoot #conceptual #oise

A post shared by Sophie Palmier (@sophiepalmier) on Oct 15, 2017 at 4:59pm PDT

Most of the time I am actually really cheap, what a surprise, so rather than buy something made for this task, I decided to poke around the house to see what I could use for a template to carve out shapes in some black poster board. Without much delay, I found these pot stands from IKEA in a kitchen drawer.

After getting a general idea of how I wanted to perforate the poster board, I drew a grid on one side using a 90-degree square ruler and a silver Sharpie.

Next, I traced the silicone saucers with a pen and sawed out holes with an X-ACTO Knife.

An hour later, I had a flag I could use to cast my own holy shadows.

In practice, I found the shapes may have been too close together as the only way I could make it work was to shine a Aputure 120D LED Light with a fresnel through the holes while casting a shadow similar in size to the holes.

I also used the set-up with dance Devon Anthony below.

I tried using a Mola Rayo without any success. Nevertheless, I think it was worth the effort. Please let me known what you think!