Sometimes paintings do not go the way you hope. This was one of those paintings. Although it can be frustrating, I know that it's where I learn the most, and it shows that I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone. That's how we grow! The main hangup with this one is the glowing and soft blurs I wanted. It's so easy to do in photoshop, but that doesn't help me since the goal for all my work is to be able to show it in a gallery, even if it's an illustration like this one. Besides that, I think that it's always better to do as much as you can by hand. I've been trying and failing to achieve a foggy haunted effect for months. When I was painting San Francisco houses with women I wanted to paint the ever-present fog, but it's difficult to do in acrylic. I finally understand out how to do it from studying Eric Fortune and Sam Weber, but that's something I'll be working on in the coming months. Too late for this piece. I got some soft edges with the spraypaint I used in the background, but I got lucky with the overspray, and some parts had to be painted over. Too unpredictable, and painting over it can be tricky. I posted the original scan of the painting, and then the final after I worked on it in PS. In this case I had to repair it in PS, and that's never good.
A few months ago I was contacted by a writer named Stiles White who has a blog called
Six Word Tales. Basically, he writes stories that are six words long, and has an illustrator make an image for it. I would normally turn down things like this, but he lets the artists "do their thing" and I actually really like the tales. I read a bunch of them, and felt my creativity firing up! That doesn't happen a lot, so I decided to pursue it. The final words are not settled, but I was going off of "They finally captured the shadow boy." Fun stuff!
Hope some of this makes sense. I've been sick the last few days and I'm kinda loopy.
