hi there! just stumbled upon your blog and i’m kinda insane about your art. your compositions are so interesting and unique!! i realized that i’ve seen a few of your pieces before but they were all so different i hadn’t realized it was the same person behind them. can i ask about your art experience? how do you come up with ideas for composition? what does your process look like?
Ahh, really? Thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a nice message TT__TT <3
I'm kinda flattered to hear that too, and it's cool to hear you've seen my other stuff before!
In regards to my art process in general;
Theme; what am I trying to tell or convey?
I've developed a backlog/library of aesthetics or ideas from everything I consume over time (photos, other artists' work, games I've played etc.), so each piece has its own foundation for reference images or theme behind it!
I would say my ideas are conversations/metaphors I want to try and illustrate (usually!)
Composition;
I'm going to be honest, since this is mostly a hobby to me it's just "I think it looks good" as the mindset - only I have visuals I've developed over time that I tend to stick to?
I've noticed I use a lot of circles and white space to draw the eye:
Picking these older pieces as a consistent example:
p1; white space mostly, obscuring eye to add some mystery and distance to Sonic. Bird silhouette to add "movement" and further the sense of distance??
p2; Again using white space to illustrate "wings" but they are clouds! Metaphorically just to portray how Sonic moves around freely in the world.
p3; again with the white birds, but the theme here was "blue bird" (as it's captioned originally) but it's based off the "blue bird of happiness" - where Sonic here is the "blue bird"! Hence why I had the birds close to him to resemble wings.
When building up the ideas, it's mostly sketches and rough colours before the lineart and final render!
Picking these pieces out for the shapes I choose!
p1; originally it was an undersea piece, but I scrapped it and opted for an outer space one (due to skill issue LOL,, and I started to dislike the greeny colours from the colour roughs I had initially). I just like circles a lot it seems??
p2; I wanted to create the shape of an eye in the sky! The theme was based off the Sonic + Shadow calendar story Toyoda-sensei wrote!
Created the shape of the eye and kept the details simple so it wouldn't be overwhelming!
p3; Again with white space and shape! The inspiration was the line from "Break through it all", "You'll wake the beast inside" - but moreso Unleashed's werehog form! ... only, inside, the only beast is Sonic as he's an indominatable spirit. So I chose to keep him rather relaxed to illustrate how he can be a threat simply for being present too.
But for lack of other words, my process in just mechanical art terms:
Preliminary sketch > colour rough > lineart > flats + render > any final edits like adjusting contrast
origamiaround
stormborns
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis