Tonight I wanted to attempt a new style idea that has been on my mind for about a week. I thought about adding specks to my work since it is something that I haven’t tried before and something that I haven’t seen anyone else doing yet. I type this knowing that tomorrow I’m going to be looking for inspiration on Pinterest and find exactly that. Hah! Ya, definitely going to happen.
In my previous works, the messy, splattered, and smeared style has always attracted me, but so many artists are also in love with that style so I’ve been wanting to look for something else.
After searching for inspiration, I scrolled over a collection of images that featured deep sea creatures and started to notice that what made these images so captivating was the glowing effect on the creature and the specks floating around it. Then, being a Disney fan, my memory recalled behind the scenes footage from Finding Nemo and the “jelly” effect they created for the characters. I wanted to try and recreate that look and also make the subject sort of emerge from the dark.
With those thoughts lingering in my brain, I found an image that I could use to practice this idea and below is the first result.
It looks pretty cool, but not great and with Krysten’s dark hair on a dark background her character felt a little lost on me. Making the background lighter and adding a sponge shade behind her gave the artwork a much better feeling.
Regardless of having to make the background light instead of dark, failing to create a soft glow, and not getting her to emerge from the dark I’m still intrigued by the whole idea of creating images with this look. Perhaps I could get subjects to emerge from any background, be it light or dark. I got the specks in there and will be considering this a win.
At the very least, it’s heading in the right direction.
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