Hey guys! How's everyone doing?
How are you today? Is it morning, night, afternoon? Good morning, good evening, depending on where you're reading this from. Today I want to tell you a little bit about one of the portraits from Ennéa Arcana. Not the very last one, but the last of the first four.
"She flows, breaks, and returns. Thalassa cannot be held—she is living water, liquid skin, a presence overflowing the now."
This time I want to introduce you to Thalassa, a representation of the sea. Her name was inspired by Greek mythology, from the sea goddess who carries that same name. I absolutely love Greek mythology. In fact, I have a very good friend, @GeorgeBoya, who’s actually from Greece and also an incredible artist. A lot of my artwork is often inspired by the gods and stories from that rich mythology.
Ennéa Arcana
So today (or tonight, or whenever you're reading this), I want to share a bit about how I made this portrait. To be honest, I’ve been a bit busy lately and kind of distant from social media. I haven’t been feeling that great these past few days, but here I am, making this little blog post. Well, technically I’m dictating it by voice because I’m doing other things at the same time. I'm also listening to music, so yeah... total multitasking.
To create this portrait, like with the others in the series, I started from the base of Selene (the Moon). I used her structure as a reference and adjusted the colors. I did everything in Corel Painter, which is a program I really like, even though I’m still figuring out how blending layers work and how to overlay stuff. I don’t have much experience with that yet, but I’m learning. I hope to upgrade to a newer version of the software soon, and that honestly makes me really happy.
The new software is a little more expensive but I only have to update it so that's nice because it's cheaper.
Like I said, the entire piece was done in Corel Painter. I even recorded a video of the process, although I haven’t edited it yet, but I hope to do that soon. Once it’s ready, I might upload it to X , which is where I usually share my process videos. I haven’t posted on YouTube in a while, and even though I also use Instagram, I’ve kind of neglected it lately.
Back to the artwork. I changed the colors and darkened the background because I wanted her, Thalassa, to stand out as the main figure. I went for a deep, dark blue to create contrast. I started covering parts of the base portrait and gradually added sea elements like waves and water movement. I used different brushes to build up texture, which is something I always aim for in my art and talk about a lot.
If you zoom into certain parts of the piece, you might see those textures I’m referring to. I really enjoy that part, and Painter lets me achieve it in a way I love. I’ve also used Photoshop a couple of times lately, even though the version I have is pretty old. I found a few brushes with a bit of texture, not as much as Painter, but enough to be useful. Still, if I were to upgrade one program, I’d probably go for Corel rather than Photoshop.
It actually took me a while to figure out how to create a water effect that didn’t look weird. I’m not entirely sure if I got it exactly the way I wanted, but I added splashes, some impact strokes, and the most important part: water drops that rise instead of falling. I also made some small changes to the eyes and other tiny details that tend to vary in each portrait.
I really like how the final piece turned out. By the way, this piece has already been sold, so it’s no longer available I’m happy to share it with you.
I’ll be editing the videos I still owe and uploading the other pieces from this same series soon. Emotionally, I’ve been a bit up and down, but I’m still working through things at my own pace.
You’ll soon be able to see the full collection. Just nine unique portraits, nine original pieces based on this theme that I love so much.
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