Mr. Fineapple - my first piece on KnownOrigin

This is one of the very few images of Mr. Fineapple,
maybe even the only one.
I feel greatly honored to have been allowed to paint a portrait of one of the most influential characters of our time.
Although nobody knows his full name we all know what he has done and achieved for each and every one of us.
I hope I was able to portray his greatness, intelligence and determination appropriately.
I gave it all I got!

Say hello to Mr. Fineapple!

I'm so happy I can share him with you now! I actually finished this painting about three months ago already, but I decided to hold it back, because I was waiting and hoping for a certain thing to happen.

At the beginning of April I applied for becoming a creator on KnownOrigin, one of the big curated nft-platforms on Ethereum, and somehow I didn't want to mint Mr. Fineapple somewhere else before I got an answer.

And a few days ago I got it!!
I'm accepted! It took so long but the wait was worth it :)
I've heard so many good things about the platform, the team and the community, that's why I applied there.
Also it's kind of a big thing in the nft-world to get on one of the established curated platforms.
And I made it!!! So happy and proud!!! :)

So our lovely Mr. Finapple is now minted on KnownOrigin :)
If you'd like to take a look, you can do it in my brand new gallery there: https://knownorigin.io/ana-fae

Okay, now to the artwork.

I wish I had a screenshot of how I actually started, because it would be quite funny ^^ (I really have to remember taking more process pictures!)
This is one of the pieces that started with just a page full of colors. I literally started with just putting some chaotic color-blobs onto the digital paper. Colors that felt good.

I like to use basic colors and experiment with different shades of them to find out how they work best together. I also moved them around quite a lot to find the best location for each color. Colors look different depending on what color is next to them, also some are "heavier" than others.

I really want to find balance in my artworks (actually in life in general ^^). It takes a while, learning new things about colors with each painting, but that's actually the most interesting part of creating a picture like this.

Parallel to that process I started to work out the different shapes.
And little by little the idea of a face started evolving from the chaos :)
I moved the shapes over one another, a hat appeared and something like a mouth, more tinkering about and at one point I was happy :)

It feels a bit like making a sculpture actually.

And then the shading and highlighting begins, which is the most time consuming, but also most relaxing part of the process :)
I'm painting mostly like I would on traditional canvas. It takes at least four, but often more layers to achieve the degree of depths that I want.

My artworks are all digitally hand-painted, but I do use some nice features of the programs I use to get where I want to. And I'm learning new things every time!
The background for example is made in AffinityPhoto, my photo editing program. It's just a simple monochrome layer with a few fun effects on it.

Another example are Mr. Finapples eyes.
I experimented a lot with layer blending modes and effects and learned a lot about what cool features Krita (my painting software) has!
Here's a picture of the left eye without the tweaks and the right eye in its final version:

And at last, actually only a few days ago when I learned that I could start minting on KnownOrigin, I had the sudden urge to try and animate our Mr. Fineapple.
So I've spent a whole day trying out different things, just to realize in the end that he is just not made for movement.
I rather wanted to keep the still portrait, almost polaroid picture like appearance.
I find it suits him better :)

But I wanted to show you one of the little animations anyway, I thought you might enjoy it ^^