While reserving the right to repeatedly modify and re-upload this image tomorrow, I must say that I’m pretty damn proud of myself for this digital piece. I won’t jump in and say that it’s the fantastic piece I’m proud of so much that I DID IT and I FOLLOWED THROUGH on a piece that was digital from start to finish. I followed a concept, I sketched it out six million times rather than committing myself to a pose I don’t like but can’t get right because digital art is finnicky like that.
This is the first in the first attempt at a “series” I want to try based on complex feelings. This one is called Exhume.
It represents “Feeling What You Don’t Want” as in those moments when you’re gripped with jealousy or rage or disappointment and you desperately want to dispel every scrap of it from your body but it just won’t get out. And you hate yourself for it and you want to break yourself to get rid of it but your heart’s still whole and as long as it’s there then the feeling won’t leave you till it chooses. You’re not about to cry and you’re not about to scream you’re just so concentrated, fruitlessly, on crushing that feeling.
I’m so excited about the concept behind it that I was willing to post this possibly prematurely. This took two really, really long sessions to figure out. I started it Saturday over like three hours, but basically all I had then was her figure and the mirror breaking. I had no idea how to color her (surprise!), and at that point I was still trying to dress her. But anything I tried to dress her in seemed to undermine the strength of her and so I used the “ink drip” idea I had but realized it could be skin-tone, and thus solved that problem. I also really like how the nude-colored and the red breaking lines go up into the background because suddenly it is a background and I didn’t need to fill it with pointless blurred shading or something. This thing is almost entirely cohesive (tying it up a little bit better I think is the only thing I’d do to it and repost for) and that’s just never happened digitally. I kinda wanna fix some of the colors but I didn’t want to sort through my 30-some layers tonight just to fix those couple spots that are way too lavender.
It reminds me a lot of this piece, which however old it was and however much it was based on Chevelle lyrics stands out as one of the most BAM concepts I’ve ever done in terms of emotionality and raw, visible feeling.
…Oddly I completely forgot that he’s held up on strings, but that makes this more related to my new piece because they’ve both got the really strong cut lines, and a bleeding heart haha.
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