Joyous And Triumphant

[egypturnash]

Joyous And Triumphant

This was going to be a quickie to take a break from spiders having tea, but it ran away with itself. Drawn direct in Illustrator; no paper rough. I'm pretty sure I got the rough, bright lines over subtler shapes thing from Bill Sienkiewicz's coloring, though I recall him sticking closer to the 'right' outline. Oh, and lots of Freas in the shapes, though the same theories are all over "Sleeping Beauty".

Comments

[eggshellhammer.livejournal.com]

Singularities just aren't as inescapable as they used to be, are they? Lovely work. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

You think whoever's being beckoned at is going to disobey a look like that?

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

The pattern in the orange part of the background: How, what?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

1. vertical orange-to-red gradient. over it, vertical white-to-blue gradient as multiply over it.
2. much later - like when 90% of the figure is done - decide it needs some texture.
3. google for "wallpaper satin"; modify search to "wallpaper satin pattern". find a site with some interesting textures; pick one.
4. place pattern in illustrator. embed, don't link, because if you link you can't make it into a fill pattern.
5. drag out a large rectangle; play with opacity. I think this is like 10% hard light.
6. realize that since the entire foreground is slightly transparent this causes problems; scribble a rough silhouette of where the foreground intersects the texture, combine with texture rectangle as compound path.

That's pretty much it! It took the longest to select the pattern, really. Just browsing looking to see what I'd click with.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Wow, this *really* turned out. So much of a sense of flow and movement.
In some parallel universe, this is one frame of an animated film, a Linklateresque slinky jazz appropriation of Egyptian myth.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Sitting there working on it with you and Nick both at your own projects was really, really nice. We need to do that more often.

I wonder how much of this could be animated. It'd have to lose most of the modelling. And I'd have to decide if those are four arms, or two overlapping in time. Stranger things have happened, though!

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was, and yes, we should. Even if your and my artistic universes resist intersection like the poles of a magnet, it's nice to have that light background pressure to be in Creative Space. <3

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I really loved what you said last night about why the war machines fascinate you, even if it's profoundly alien to my artistic mission of "make pretty things". You really should pursue that end of things along with simple realism.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I've been groping along towards that for some time, and I'll certainly continue to do so. It was what I was aiming for, for one, with Dust Halo and various other neglected projects, as well as the character of Citla. Not to mention everything I've ever done for Suomi. :)

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

The textures in this really stand out, Peggy. I've been wanting to get AI to do this sort of thing myself. You've got some great subtle tones in there as well. If you can keep this up, you'll save a bunch of time not having to sketch and scan... for, you know, like -comics- and stuff. :"D That's a nice, saleable print right there.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

See comment above for half the texture procedure. The other half of the texture is done by drawing the overlaid lines on their own layer with with an oval art brush, then throwing an opacity mask in: 50% grey, mezzotint. Takes forever to compute but it's worth it.

And just about everything is translucent. All the layers for the figure are in a containing layer that's set to like 90% transparent, so it picks up part of the color below; there's a lot of piled-up freehand scribbled shapes at low transparency, as well. AI gets kinda respond to draw near the end of the piece; I'd tried this kind of thing a few years ago, and was stymied by the sluggishness of my previous several-years-old machine.

I can only make something work direct in AI a few times a year, right now. And there's almost always a layer with an abandoned sketch completely different from what actually happens. Usually I prefer the discipline of starting on paper, to make sure I nail down things that need nailing down...

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

Yay! Joe and I agree: your art is SO nice

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I just need to quit making it for nobody but myself and the people who happen to find it on the INternet. *sigh*

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

Correct me here if I've misunderstood you, but—what's the point in making art if not for yourself?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It'd be nice to exchange my art skills for economic trade tokens, yknow?

[robocoon.livejournal.com]

My favourite parts, aside from the arrows of course, are her painted toenails, that little bit of green on the couch, and the smallness of her boobs (it's a contrast from your standard, and seriously, the proportion looks nice XD). Ooh, and the curve of her stinger.

Is it just me or has she been showing up more frequently lately?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

A contrast from my standard? Mm. And to think I used to be known for generally drawing tiny tits...

I think she has been. Always abstracted and metaphorical now.

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

Death may await with big point teeth, but wotta way to go!
I really like the little details on this, the background, the paited toes, the little heart on the collar. Nice, very nice.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Death is just a symbol for transformation anyway. Except when it's, well, death.

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

True, but in this case Death seems to be taking a particually active interest in this latest, transformation?

I guess that leads one to wonder what would transform Death.. besides perhaps it's own little death?

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

There's something very structured about this. Which is very weird because when I look at it from different angles, it's definitely your loose, spontaneousness. But the coloring, the way the shades are. It seems more traditional than usual. It looks attractive to me.

She's got someone on a leash. Those aren't imaginary lines. It's just that there's a filter over the image, like a special lens, that shows us where the "Angle of Attraction" is. :>

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

When I ended up deciding to keep both sets of arms I drew, it took on a sort of iconic, hierarchical abstraction. The way Hindu deities have extra limbs, not to represent actually having five heads and ten arms, but to show them being many symbolic things at once. Is her hair red to go with her outfit, or red to symbolize Chaos and Fire? Is the leash on the floor for her, for a third implied person, or is it the same as the one in mid-air, seen at a different point in time?

She's a solid entity with mass enough to bend the cushions. But she's also a Hirschfeld abstraction.

I very carefully construct the illusion of real media. But it's all so fake.

[luoto.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like it too!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

*sigh* When I draw this kind of thing, all I get is the equivalent of 'dur, b00bs'.