#cos i always hav a fear that when i decide to record the whole process of a piece

[not-xpr-art]

Progress shots of my ‘Portrait of a lady on fire’ piece!

I finally managed to remember to record my full process for this piece lol! Because of this, I’m gonna make this post a sort of follow on from this post about my creative process!

My inspiration and reference for this piece was a screenshot from the film, along with Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer above the sea of fog’ (both can be seen below)

I tried to keep this piece as close to how I would do a traditional painting as possible to match the style of Friedrich’s piece (so, keeping all my painting on one layer, trying to work a section at a time, etc). 

I mostly used a fluffy textured brush for the painting (aside from the initial laying down of colours in the 2nd image, which I used a flat ‘watercolour’ brush). As I’ve talked about before, textured brushes are great for blending and for keeping things from being too harsh, which is perfect when you’re trying to go for a sort of oil painting-esque look!

I really liked the stark contrast of Friedrich’s figure and the sea in the background, so I tried to sort of emulate that in my own by painting the figures in slightly darker and more saturated tones than in the reference. (I think I also inadvertently made them slightly more ‘static’ looking, which I don’t hate since it fits quite well with the meaning behind the piece, which I’ll get into in a bit lol!) 

A lot about using references is deciding what elements you want to keep the same, and what you want to change in your own piece. In this work, since a part of my intention of it was doing a screencap study (since this pride month project is about celebrating my favourite queer films), the composition and colours are pretty similar to the reference. 

I hoped that my piece would have a similar feeling to it as the scene in the film, and I especially liked that shot because of the kind of voyeuristic vibes it gives. Another artist on instagram also commented that she thought it felt as if the viewer was standing with the two figures, looking across at the scenery with them, which was a concept I didn’t really consider when I was painting it, but absolutely love what it represents! The film had a feel of the viewer constantly imposing on a private and extremely intimate moment between the two women, almost like something so beautiful that we were never meant to see. 

I also think of the connection the film makes to the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and how neither figure in my painting will never look back at the onlooker, forever caught in a moment where they’re so close, yet so distant. Makes you wonder whether it’s better to exist in a perpetual state of calm, or to look back and risk the pain and humiliation that might cause... Maybe I’m reading too much into it though lol

If you read this far then thank you lol!! 

Feel free to check out some of my other art advice posts and let me know if there’s anything in particular you want me to talk about in my next one! <3

#art progress #art process #artists on tumblr #art advice #digital art #painting #art tips #digital art tips #artist advice #idk if this really classes as an actual advice post but... i'm putting it there anyway lol #i was very lucky that the process for this went really smoothly #cos i always hav a fear that when i decide to record the whole process of a piece #i'll have a big up hill struggle which will make for a really messy and ugly looking set of process pics #which like... i KNOW is the point of art and that art IS messy and ugly sometimes #but for an informative thing like this i like it to at least look like i know what i'm doing pfft (which i dont)