For once, I know nothing of the potato priests. I called them that because they were short and lumpy and had small round eyes. The one on the left looks a bit nervous about something, though. Perhaps there are rumors of a mad potato peeler on the loose.
This was entirely a technical experiment. I started out with acrylic and dip-pen with acrylic ink, a little colored pencil, some liquid acrylic, and then I added the sky at the end with oil paintsticks. I don't like mucking around with oil paints, per se, but the paintsticks are a nice compromise--blendy and squishy in the appropriate fashion, but much more controllable and clean-up-able. So this was basically "Can I get a scribbly thing goin' with the pens, and then finish off the sky with the paintsticks?" and the answer appears to be "Sort of."
The end result has a definite John-Jude-Palencar-meets-James-Christiansen feel, which is good, because that's more or less what I was going for. I did learn a few interesting things along the way--the halo around each one came out much stronger than I anticipated, probably because I'm working on Ampersand Gessoboard, and when I tried to scrub off the layer of oil, I wound up taking the acrylic underpainting with it, so the glow got even stronger. The effect is stronger than I wanted, but it's hard to correct, since you can't layer acrylic back over oil. Still, at least I know how to do glow now, and that's something, even if I hardly ever paint anything glowy!
That aside, I rather like the end result. The combination of the scribbliness and the fine grain of the gessoboard against the soft squishiness of the sky is a contrast I can see pursuing in future paintings--the trick is figuring out how to get the scribbly sky to gracefully blend into the squishy sky.
Anyway! 12 x 24 on gessoboard, mixed media, original is for sale and prints are available. Send a note for details, or visit
[link] for ordering info.
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
When you're doing a halo-style glow, intended to be the glow of a person's spirit, as it were, rather than just saying the person in question is radioactive, you want to leave just a tiny gap between the outer edge of the figure and where the halo begins. The gap can be subtly lighter than the rest of the background, but should be darker than the main portion of the halo effect. Makes the glow a bit sharper, and more ethereal. *shrugs, wanders off*
...and yeah, I know this is like three years too late. >.< Sorry?
Great job! I love paintings like this.