HOME | DD

Description
Yay, another art completed so soon? I'm cheating, I started this a couple of weeks ago. But alas, digital art takes forever for me. Probably because it's far less intuitive then pencils.

But yeah so, what's with all the shine. Well, in case you didn't know, that's what my imagination is like: shine and color, glitter all over the place, if possible, motley XD Hahah, no. But sometimes yes. But in fact, where Winter is regarded, it is very much deserved. In fact, this was inspired by a real experience. It was the first day of winter, right after the Winter Solstice. As you know, I celebrate the Winter Solstice as a major holiday (could be said THE major one) and this time it was accompanied by a really important event in my life. Those days were really spiritual. And as though to celebrate that, for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years, it snowed on the Solstice. The next day I went out and walked out in the fields close to where I live. It was cold, but sunny, there had been fog the night before, and everything was white and shimmering with frost. It was a winter wonderland the kind of which I rarely see nowadays here. It was a really beautiful and special day. Beautiful views and feelings that I will remember. You know, when you are thinking that you want to draw / paint something - you know it is very beautiful.

Later I found this picture of a snowy owl, a bird I really find very beautiful, and I decided I wanted to draw him. While pondering on the background, I realized what I saw back then on the first winter day would be a very nice background, albeit not a very realistic one. And although I cannot really draw what I saw and remember, my abilities won't quite permit it, the scenery behind the owl is inspired by that view. And it isn't a bad representation of the beauty of that day, I think.

Now.... the intention of what to draw as a background was clear and I thought it would be fairly simple. It's all white, right? WRONG. In fact, it's anything but XD Besides, drawing a scenery that is "all-white", brightly lit and shimmering and still make things stand out and be distinguishable from each other is not so easily achieved. At least to someone like me who is really not into backgrounds and sceneries. So there were several failed attempts and a lot of rummaging through pictures and paintings of frosty winter scenery before I could get even close to something promising. But since I wasn't sure how to paint what i envisioned, even the references were not a complete solution. So the rest was a lot of experimenting and playing around with colors and light. I also decided I am tired of the uniformity of hues and values in my paintings (that results from me using a very limited number of colors), and I started fooling around with the different blending modes of the brushes (which I didn't know existed until recently). Eventually I decided I wanted to paint something in this new fashion and try to keep to that technique rather than refine the painting to something overly sterile and stiff. Seen as I usually have the urge to hide all the drawing traces and brush-strokes and that didn't produce very nice results, I also decided I want to see if I can do otherwise and be a bit.... bolder. So that's why there's so much messy lines, so much strange illogical colors and why I didn't finish and refine and polish each and every inch of it but left some places messy in an "artsy" (read lazy) way. It's against me to leave this like that, but I decided, "screw yourself Lapis, you need a new touch in art".
So! This mess of chaotic colors and hues is really my experimental canvas - sorta the artistic equivalent of the mad scientist's lab. HOWEVER. I did learn some things. I did practice using the blending options of brushes to create unexpected and less "control-freakish" strokes, shades, effects. I did leave stuff a bit messy and brush-strokey, even if that makes me a little uneasy still. I also find that this messy brush-strokey method is actually good for this one particular kind of cirrus clouds, lol XD That was a flick of the moment. All in all, here's a shiny, glittery, frosty experiment. Enjoy, lol XD

Nah, I mean, I'm not entirely satisfied. Particularly with the composition - value and scenery-wise. But that's not so important. I did learn some stuff here and that makes me happy.
Ah yeah, and the owl is good, but then this is something I can paint, especially with a reference. I could have added a lot more detail, but that would have made it untrue to the spirit of this painting XD

Reference for the owl:

The rest is imagination.
Ps CS6 with Wacom Intuos 4.
About 5 hours altogether.

Featured:
Brigade Art Feature - June 2022
Once upon a time
Winter Beauty
Heavenlybackyardbird Vol.#4

Description
Yay, another art completed so soon? I'm cheating, I started this a couple of weeks ago. But alas, digital art takes forever for me. Probably because it's far less intuitive then pencils.

But yeah so, what's with all the shine. Well, in case you didn't know, that's what my imagination is like: shine and color, glitter all over the place, if possible, motley XD Hahah, no. But sometimes yes. But in fact, where Winter is regarded, it is very much deserved. In fact, this was inspired by a real experience. It was the first day of winter, right after the Winter Solstice. As you know, I celebrate the Winter Solstice as a major holiday (could be said THE major one) and this time it was accompanied by a really important event in my life. Those days were really spiritual. And as though to celebrate that, for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years, it snowed on the Solstice. The next day I went out and walked out in the fields close to where I live. It was cold, but sunny, there had been fog the night before, and everything was white and shimmering with frost. It was a winter wonderland the kind of which I rarely see nowadays here. It was a really beautiful and special day. Beautiful views and feelings that I will remember. You know, when you are thinking that you want to draw / paint something - you know it is very beautiful.

Later I found this picture of a snowy owl, a bird I really find very beautiful, and I decided I wanted to draw him. While pondering on the background, I realized what I saw back then on the first winter day would be a very nice background, albeit not a very realistic one. And although I cannot really draw what I saw and remember, my abilities won't quite permit it, the scenery behind the owl is inspired by that view. And it isn't a bad representation of the beauty of that day, I think.

Now.... the intention of what to draw as a background was clear and I thought it would be fairly simple. It's all white, right? WRONG. In fact, it's anything but XD Besides, drawing a scenery that is "all-white", brightly lit and shimmering and still make things stand out and be distinguishable from each other is not so easily achieved. At least to someone like me who is really not into backgrounds and sceneries. So there were several failed attempts and a lot of rummaging through pictures and paintings of frosty winter scenery before I could get even close to something promising. But since I wasn't sure how to paint what i envisioned, even the references were not a complete solution. So the rest was a lot of experimenting and playing around with colors and light. I also decided I am tired of the uniformity of hues and values in my paintings (that results from me using a very limited number of colors), and I started fooling around with the different blending modes of the brushes (which I didn't know existed until recently). Eventually I decided I wanted to paint something in this new fashion and try to keep to that technique rather than refine the painting to something overly sterile and stiff. Seen as I usually have the urge to hide all the drawing traces and brush-strokes and that didn't produce very nice results, I also decided I want to see if I can do otherwise and be a bit.... bolder. So that's why there's so much messy lines, so much strange illogical colors and why I didn't finish and refine and polish each and every inch of it but left some places messy in an "artsy" (read lazy) way. It's against me to leave this like that, but I decided, "screw yourself Lapis, you need a new touch in art".
So! This mess of chaotic colors and hues is really my experimental canvas - sorta the artistic equivalent of the mad scientist's lab. HOWEVER. I did learn some things. I did practice using the blending options of brushes to create unexpected and less "control-freakish" strokes, shades, effects. I did leave stuff a bit messy and brush-strokey, even if that makes me a little uneasy still. I also find that this messy brush-strokey method is actually good for this one particular kind of cirrus clouds, lol XD That was a flick of the moment. All in all, here's a shiny, glittery, frosty experiment. Enjoy, lol XD

Nah, I mean, I'm not entirely satisfied. Particularly with the composition - value and scenery-wise. But that's not so important. I did learn some stuff here and that makes me happy.
Ah yeah, and the owl is good, but then this is something I can paint, especially with a reference. I could have added a lot more detail, but that would have made it untrue to the spirit of this painting XD

Reference for the owl:

The rest is imagination.
Ps CS6 with Wacom Intuos 4.
About 5 hours altogether.

Featured:
Brigade Art Feature - June 2022
Once upon a time
Winter Beauty
Heavenlybackyardbird Vol.#4