Face In A Cloud

 You might remember me mentioning before that I’ve been working on a poster. Well..I still can’t post that anywhere but it’s fairly safe to say it’s for a horror movie so I need permission to put it online. They may not even want to use it but It’s coming along well even if I do say so myself.

I felt I should post this image and some of the ideas surrounding it. I think the piece could be better but it’s important to record the concept. I’m thinking of it as an experiment more than anything.

I’ve also started this Photoshop course. Now it’s for beginners and I’m so used to Corel Painter that there’s a lot of basic stuff I’ve never known about Photoshop so it’s good to go back to the beginning. I’m starting to apply these things in my own work when I get home.

What I’ve done here is isolated one face from the composition of the poster painting and taken it to a point where it’s something new, more unrecognizable and abstract. A cheeky way of giving you a hint at what the poster might be like. The original face is very detailed in its painting style. I played around a lot with Blur tools and some blenders in both PS and Painter (couldn’t help myself the water blenders look much more natural). It started as a triptych of 3 heads. Each at varying stage of blend but then It felt right to merge them into one image.

Inspirations recently have obviously been the horror thing but also music. I watched this Converge DVD the other day and it started off a whole train of thought. They’re from Salem and the shows have this amazing intense energy. Watch a live show and there’s a point where the energy in the room just changes. This music video for “Eagles become vultures’ kind of illustrates the point too. Some raw, brutal, release surges through and takes people over.

I was thinking about the Salem connection as well and the witch trials, I read somewhere that it was the largest recorded case of mass hysteria (not sure whether that’s factually true? but still). Another seed of the idea was seeing these really great paintings by Dan Witz of mosh pits.

All seperate things but I hope you can see how it’s all coming together in my head. This raw energy, the point where people let loose or lose it is an interesting thing to try and capture in paint and something I will definitely be exploring further in my sketchbook.

The name ‘Face In A Cloud’- I see faces everywhere, clouds, decaying walls, old carpets. People’s minds conjure different things and while staring at this painting I see things start to move like clouds. Some folks see unicorns, I normally see stuff like this.

Anyway until next time! it’d be great to hear your thoughts on this!

EDIT- Okay so I have had this post saved as a draft for a week now. I was working on this painting and blog post when I got the news that my good friend and housemate passed away.

I can’t help but read that into the image now. It’s been an intense week and my work could slow a little while I get things back on track. Please don’t ask me about this issue on here but life, death and art go hand in hand. I had to make this a dedication.

He was an amazing guy and will inspire me in everything I do in the future. Never forgotten. RIP Brother.

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