[root88]

This is how I feel about viewings.

Created in painter at twices this size.

Web browsers lose some of the smaller details in the pic because jpegs are darker in them for some reason.

I'll describe how I made it from the bottom up. I used the digital airbrush for the floor and overlayed a texture (ala filters) that I skewed to the angle I wanted the floor to be. For the characters and the jar, I used the digital airbrush and the just add water brush. To create the sky, I created an entirely new image by combining 5 photos taken by the hubble telescope and blending them together. I used a variety of cloner brushes to paint the image onto my canvas and really get things mixed up. I wanted the butterfly shape to show in the clouds of the background. Then I mirrored half the background and flipped so it would look like and extension of the butterfly (which I wanted to make symetrical). Then I used the just add water brush to blend the sky into the lower black background. To create the butterfly, I used the blocker brush and digital air brush. I looked at 4 or 5 photos of butterflies as a reference. I liked the shape of the wings on one, the colors on another, the pattern on another, the body of another, etc. After I drew one wing, I mirrored just it to make the other, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I wanted it to be exact, (like I did with the background).

If anyone can see anything that needs work before I slap my sig on this, could you please let me know?

[Lukias]

Very cool.

Please explain as to whats actually happening in this piece. I'm very curious.

Butterfly, tired/depressed/upset dudes and something....odd in a jar......fasinating.

[CrakBEENie]

thats pretty crazy .....did these guys get ahold of some bad LSD and they just hangin on until the trips over or what....i cant see anything id change, it looks good the way it is...looks like the caterpillar turned into a butterfly, and for some reason these guys are having a hard time dealing with it....anyways, dont explain the whats going on, its better left to the imagination

[This message has been edited by CrakBEENie (edited February 12, 2001).]

[sahripper]

Its not nice to piss off the space gods by intergrating it into your pic. But it still looks cool. Good work, what kind of stuff are they on...I want some j/k

[Pigeon]

how surreal...

Looks done, and I never say that lightly.

-Dean

[root88]

Wow thanks guys!

I usually refuse to tell people what's going on in my images, but I guess I will this time.

The picture is supposed to be a viewing. Sometimes when people die, family and friends all go to get one last look at the body. I feel it's in bad taste. What you are looking at is a dried up corpse, not the person that you knew and loved. A few years ago I went to my grandfather's viewing. The last time I saw him before that, he had a big smile on his face and he was laughing. What I saw at that viewing was not my Grandfather and was not the last memory of him I would like to remember. All I saw was an old container that held his spirit. I like to think that after this life, in one way or another, your spirit moves on to a new adventure. To me death is like setting a butterful free that was trapped in a jar.* The viewing is like staring at an empty jar a crying about it. In a way I a mocking the mourners with this image. Hopefully in a tasteful way.

Hope that makes sense to someone, I think the image represents my feelings better than my words did. I wasn't sure exactly how to put what I was feeling into words.

*note: a very comfortable jar that I don't want to leave for at least 175 more years. (Didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea there)

[CrakBEENie]

well now you ruined it, i just thought they got ahold of some bad acid..just messin..thats awsome, i do look at it differently now that i know what its all about, but i think i like it even more now, this is a masterpeice..now i order you to go out and get paid

[Unit]

That is some kickass work, I couldn't leave this thread without acknowledging the coolness of your piece. Keep it up and show us some more.

[Awetopsy]

very cool image man.. I may not agree with the theology behind it but your intitled to it.. I like this pic because it comes from the heart.. where most art should come from. Good work.

-awe

(oh i dont wat to start a theological discussion by this either )

[waylon]

I guess I'll give some crits. First off, the picture looks WAY too mirrored. I know that's what you were going for, but life isn't symmetric, and it just doesn't look quite right if it's depicted that way. The butterfly, when it comes down to it, looks ok, but the background is really distracting. (not to mention you used practically the #1 famous hubble telescope picture, which will be instantly recognizable to a number of geeks out there - which kind of distracts from the meaning of the picture.)

One other thing I'd like to say is that the picture seems to lack a sense of unity. You've got the butterfly and nebula, which go well together, and you've got the guys with the jar, which go well together, but there's nothing connecting the two elements. The perspective is different, the lighting is different - you even (essentially) drew a black line right across the middle of the picture. It's not immediately obvious that the butterfly and the jar are related, from a compositional standpoint (though we obviously make the connection anyway.) I think if you tied the top and bottom halves of the picture together better, it would strengthen the piece enormously. But then again, it's all about the effect you were going for, and I might have misinterpreted the whole thing. In any case, it's very well done, and it really conveys a lot of emotion.

[Switch]

I agree with Waylon about the symetry it needs more asymetry. The huble pics are a cool idea, i think those are 'the pillars of creation' up the top, some big nebulae, which fits in with your theme nicely.

[travis travis]

Fucking brilliant. Thanks for expressing yourself. The artwork is great, and although I agree with this sort of thing and may be inclined to deal with these sorts of subjects also... I suggest you do at least give your pieces partially explanatory titles or something... because even with me thinking along similar lines, I didn't catch on to the exact meaning until you explained it. But now that I see the whole thing as you meant... incredible!

[Elijah]

that looks like some hubble tele imagery in the BG