I wanted to try many things. In the last few days, I found myself starting an artwork but never finishing it. It happened one too many times that my phone ended up being filled with unfinished WIPs.
I tried to complete one, just for the heck of completing something, but the satisfaction was nowhere to be found. Anything I completed half-heartedly had felt dead. It was bad, and just when I decided to just take a nap and forget about it, an idea came and I had to make it make form. Hence, phantasmagoria.
What a phantasmagoric experience it was living her life this way. She was happy, she was beautiful. It almost felt like a dream.
This artwork is minted into two editions at NFT Showroom. It is one of the two artworks I plan to include in the collection Phantasmagoria. I intend to make this collection about fantastical, dream-like beauty. (As far as beautiful I can make them.)
This piece was a play on an Alice Vink portrait photo. It was a very simple portrait, and one that would be really fun to play around with.
I love incorporating flowers into my works lately, and they were unconsciously done. There's no exact reason why I include them, except maybe they always represent beauty to me. I think that's why I included flowers once again this time -- because they fit the context.
Lately, I would start my pieces with parts I thought would be difficult to me. In this case, based on the sketches I made, those would be the flowers and the butterfly. If I painted them first and they didn't turn out the way I imagined them to, I would scrap the work.
I realized that was a really bad way to go, inhibiting growth. I couldn't always just scrap something because it didn't turn out the way I wanted to. I decided to start with the portrait, because that was what I was used to. I would slowly go from there.
My favorite part of the Alice Vink portrait was where her eyes and eyebrows were. Her gaze was just so pretty, I'm enamored!
In a while, I finished working on the bust portrait, and I had to move on to either the flowers or the butterfly.
A fun fact: I love flowers, and I love butterflies, albeit in pictures only. Despite that, I always find these two to be difficult to paint. I don't know why! If I would try to think hard enough, I'd say it was because I focused so much on portraits, painting other things didn't interest me.
I decided to export my MediBang file into PSD and polish the artwork on Photoshop. I imagined the butterfly to glow, so I created another layer in a linear dodge blend mode and added in the lighting. I also adjusted the curves to get it to look sharper and livelier.
The smoothness felt off, so I went around filters and decided to add some noise. Not much, but just enough to offset the "too smooth" feel there was. (I expected the too smooth feel exactly because I didn't use textured brushes.)
I really enjoyed working on this one. It was simple, but it looked the way I hoped it would. I wish to create more art like this if time permits.
On another note, I've been lagging behind work, the thought spurs on anxiety. I wanted to ignore the growing pile of back logs, but that would just worsen the situation. D: I might have to take a break from arts after contextualizing and creating the final piece for the collection Phantasmagoria. ...or not, if I'm feeling rebellious. :P
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