The Process Behind 'Descent From Möbius Wood' #1

 

I thought it was about time that I looked at the process behind my first painting in the 'Seven Gates' series: 'Descent From Möbius Wood'.

Unlike the others in the series, this image came to my mind fully formed. I had seen a tree that looked like a spider emerging from the ground in a local wood and knew that it would make a great subject. I just had to wait for some fog. And a sunny morning. It took a while...

Eventually I got the photo that I needed. After that I worked on it in Photoshop, making the central tree even more sinister. You can see the differences in these two photos:

 Before

 After

I also added in the trees at the outer edges to frame the painting and draw the viewer into the centre.

 

Before 

 After

I decided on the slightly unorthodox composition of putting the main subject in the centre because I wanted the main tree to be straight in front of the viewer, as if being drawn directly toward it.

When children paint pictures of trees, the trunks tend to be brown. But when stood in a forest concentrating on the colours present within a tree, purples, greens, greys etc. can all be seen. There is actually very little brown evident. So when I was processing my photo of the forest, I tweaked the saturation to bring out these natural colours. This helped me enormously when it came to adding subtle colour washes to the trees when I started painting.

In the next stage, I drew the forest image on my illustration board but I changed the central tree yet again. I was trying to balance the tree looking sinister with it not being spotted straight away but I couldn't resist adding more spiky bits and talon-like branches. That was the aspect that realy appealed to me, as you can probably tell from my other paintings. But even now it surprises me how many people just can't see anything other than a pleasant fairy tale forest. 

Next time, I'll go into the painting process and how I created depth in the image.  

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The Process Behind 'The Insidious Whisper' #1

'The Insidious Whisper' stems from times when a person's inner monologue goes rogue and becomes his or her worst enemy. But it does it slyly and sneakily, hidden in the mists of the mind so to speak. When this happens, it's not the most useful of things and its main objective is to criticise and generally put down its owner. What makes it so devious is that these thoughts are very hard to spot. But spotting them is the key to turning them around and beating back the foul beast.

My original idea was to have a large hulking creature sat in a wooded area, framed by a circle of branches and other foliage. (The work of Brian Froud - see above - was lurking around somewhere in my subconcious especially in the fairy tale fantasy feel that I was after.) On the creature's shoulder would have been a crafty little character whispering into its ear, a bit like the cartoon devils in various Looney Tunes cartoons, but more disturbing obviously. I went through the usual process of making lists of words through free association (for more on this click here). This radically changed the setting and the respective sizes of the figures. The whisperer became a large powerful beast and the other character a more dejected emaciated figure.

  
Luckily enough, when I was planning this painting there was fog every morning for about a week, so I went out with my camera taking reference photos in Conisbrough (around by the old Earth Centre) and by an old bunker in Rossington, affectionately known as 'The Shack'. I also went to an area of waste ground by the side of the Keepmoat stadium but I never actually used this area in my painting. Maybe another time...

To help sell the idea of the scale of the large figure I wanted to have interaction between him and the environment. I built scale models of the shack and other elements and took photos of myself in various hard to maintain positions. I then played around with this in Photoshop and twisted the figure into an even more improbable position. All of this work helped to solidify the final positions of the characters in my mind.

After this planning I drew out a rough outline of the buildings in perspective and the figures. After scanning this into the computer I played around with the positions of the tentacles - you can really see the Lovecraft influences coming out here - to lead the viewer around the painting, give a greater sense of scale and also use the z-axis in an interesting way.

Once the drawing was finished I printing it out and transferred it on to the illustration board ready for the painting stage. As you can see from this initial sketch I was going with the idea of a cracked earth explosion around the eye on the whisperer. This would change later on in the process, but we'll find out about that next time...

See you then! 

For Part 2, click here.

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The Process Behind 'Welcome' #3

After the planning stage I started on the painting in a conventional manner with the sky then the background. I repainted the sky a couple of times to get a look that I was happy with, using some very careful blending. The background was much easier. I used a similar technique to painting water, always working horizontally across the image, but swapping the colours to create a foreboding unsettling landscape.

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The translucent cape was the hardest part of this painting. After finding many images of translucent floaty material, I drew one particularly appropriate piece to get a feel for the fabric.

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After that, again working in pencil, I worked out what I wanted the cape to look like, mainly sinuous, sinister and floaty. I drew it in four separate pieces to be overlaid when it came to the painting stage.

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Tracing these drawings was the next stage to add them to the painting. (I'm not adverse to tracing when I've actually drawn the original.) I only transferred the outline on to the painting, as I kept the drawing as a reference for the shading later.

Rather than blather on about how I painted them in writing, I'll blather on about them in video form:

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As I was painting the material I would go back and forwards between the painting and a Photoshop version where I could try out placements for new pieces of fabric. This was particularly of use when it came to the pieces snaking around her arms which were not in my original plan.

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The rest of the painting was fairly straightforward. Easily the most fun part was the hair. Starting with a dark basecoat I applied fine hair detail in white.

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It was then just a matter of using thin washes to develop the colours and tones to exactly where I wanted them. (The 'just' part of that last sentence was a full day of 'just'.) It was a really satisfying process and one that I have used significantly on my next painting. But not for hair. (See below for a sneak preview.)

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See you next time.

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The Process Behind 'Welcome' #2

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After the whole free association business that I rambled on about last time, I actually start to put pencil to paper and start sketching some initial ideas. This could be in the form of thumbnail sketches to help me get a feel for the composition or sketches of important components.

In the case of 'Welcome', I used both techniques to arrive at the idea for the mask. I spent a lot of time looking at and researching Venetian masks and the meanings behind the different types of masks. The type I chose was a Volto mask. Vivo Masks states that historically these masks "guaranteed complete and utter anonymity as no part of the face shows". This was perfect for what I wanted. I tried out some small sketches to get a feel for the general look of the mask and when I was happy I had a go at a larger sketch. I settled on a final design relatively quickly, although changes were made in the finished painting.

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I used Photoshop extensively in the planning stage of this painting. I had taken some photos of the bleak landsape I required at Hatfield Moors, near Doncaster. Interestingly the place that I chose is the site where a plane crashed in World War II. It was on its way back to Finningley. One person survived the crash only to die on the moor not far from the plane. There are still some small fragments of the plane there now on the small hill shown in the painting (although the actual hill isn't rocky in the slightest). I tweaked the landscape to make it darker and added a new broodier sky. Then it became a collage job to put together the character from a variety of sources.

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In the planning stages, I love the flexibility that Photoshop gives me. I can try out ideas quickly and I can always go back to previous versions if I'm not happy. One problem that I noticed though was that I spent a little too long (read that as far too long) fiddling about and making a half decent job of the final image on screen that I would then use as my reference for painting from. On the painting that I'm busy with at the moment, I rectified this and only developed a very rough version that was enough to solidify the composition.

The reasons why I don't use Photoshop for my finished paintings are that due to the personal nature of my paintings I wanted to work in a more personal media, one where my hand mixes the paint and applies it to the board, and I also feel that paintings created in Photoshop have a similar feel to them. Don't get me wrong, I like that feel for certain subject matter, I just didn't feel that it was right for this series of paintings. Maybe I'll work solely in Photoshop at some point. We'll see...

For Part 3, click here.

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The Process Behind 'Welcome' #1

After releasing my latest painting into the wild I thought it was probably best to tell you a little bit about the process I go through in creating my images. I start with an idea; it could be a feeling, a problem, a desire, anything really that lurks around in the dark secluded areas of my mind. At this stage I already have an idea about how I’m going to represent it visually but I’m very open to change.

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I write down the central idea at the top of a piece of paper and then use free association (the mental process by which one word or image may spontaneously suggest another without any necessary logical connection) to derive a list of words. I try not to think about why I’ve chosen these words, I put them down and consider the implications later.

Then I look at this first list and see which word(s) jump out at me. Again, I don’t think why, I just go with it. I choose one of these words, start a new list and then repeat the free association. Making lists for each of the words that jumped out is time consuming but it generates a lot of ideas.

Finally I repeat this whole process a third time, seeing which words jump out and making new lists. I do it three times because I think that this stops me from skittering about on the surface and forces me to delve deeper. Many times I will reach one of the third level lists, a word will spring from my mind and I’ll think ah, that’s what this is all about.

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Using all of the lists, I look for suitable words to mould the direction of the painting. This can sometimes cause radical changes. On my painting ‘Welcome’ the background stayed fairly similar to my original idea but the character changed dramatically. My initial plan was to make her a wizened old witch with leathery skin and deranged eyes. I don’t know which would have been more fun painting, but finding reference material for the current version was certainly interesting.

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I got the idea for using free association from the screenwriting book ‘Story’ by Robert McKee. It advises looking at your script, seeing which words jump out at you, and then free associating. Doing this process with a script was a revelation that certainly delved deeper into the characters' motivations and personalities. So I pinched the idea for my painting.

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There I was, feeling a tiny bit smug, thinking that I’d found a new method of creating images, and oh... it turns out the surrealists got there quite a few years before me. Ah well, here’s hoping that the process will deliver some original images instead.

For Part 2 click here.

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