The tech free haven of Enys has been visited several times in my Other Worlds Tour.
This story follows on from quite a distressing tale featuring the terrifying Madil invaders on Suacew Majora and other recent artworks about the uprising of the cyborgs. Whilst tying in to the storyline, it gives a little respite to both myself and avid readers of the stories, this was very relaxing to create. As all technology is banned on Enys, including brain implants, visitors have no option to re-connect with life and nature that surrounds them, meditate and reflect upon their life. With the distrust of robotics, AI and all machinery that basically now runs the lives of the majority of worlds, ships and space station populations in the high tech universe, people have rapidly woken up to their vunerability in the storyline. I practise meditation often, needing the off switch from social media and taking time to go for a walk looking at the world around me. I still relish getting absorbed in a good book, listening to some audio version lately which I've really enjoyed. Music is also very important to me, it's not often that I create art without listening to music and it has to be the right choice for the mood of the piece I'm working on. Many people visiting the world of Enys are now there to learn basic human needs, like cooking and farming. Most humans in my story universe have never grown or prepared food themselves in many generations, it is all done by robotics from start to finish, what happens if the robots are hacked, control taken by one of the invading forces. It does make me wonder if that is the what we will end up like here on Earth, how many people already live on processed food from massive factories with only a couple of people on the production floor surrounded by robots. Read the short story Temple Of The Crane on Instagram
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I am frequently asked about my stories that are created as part of each art piece in my Other Worlds Tour. So I thought I'd share a little more about the process.
Often you will see names or words that are unfamiliar in the English Language, many place names are completely made up, often amalgamations of items surrounding me, some are based on reality like the Madokami nebula that features in a few of my pieces where humans have set up a colony. Other words are from the Cornish Language like the title of this artwork which menas tree spirits/fairies, it's a way of weaving some Cornish culture into my works and means alot to me. This story actually started forming as I experimented with lighting on the tree, thinking at one point I could see a face, I thought yes, a Dryad based story, and set about actually intergrating a character into the tree. Then as I continued creating the world, my imagination goes into overdrive, often going through several storylines rapidly in my head, in a Minority Report style when they're examining the screens, dismissing many ideas. Happy with the lighting, I looked at the water, then the final idea formed, remembering the seas and the fishermen at Port Isaac preparing their boats below my school on the cliff top at Port Isaac, you could also see the beautiful view of the valley. I relished the idea, that on this world, the trees generated the wind by waving their branches, spurred on by the fisherman's sea shanties, a perfect fit especially as the Port Isaac Fisherman's Friends have achieved well deserved success. Thus the story was born. Short story ❀ Spyrys Gwydhenn ❀ Other Worlds Tour The sailors of Raxyon have many sea shanties about the Spyrys Gwydhenn, the ancient Dryad tree spirits. The sailors still firmly believe that the winds on Raxyon that fill their sails are only created by the Spyrys Gwydhenn, so strong are their views that if any dispute this, they are promptly thrown overboard! Before a young apprentice is permitted to step aboard a vessel for the first time, the captain stands at the shoreline whilst they sing the shanties heartily, the captain closely watching the trees in the valley beyond. Even on a the calmest days when the island seas are mirror smooth, if the songs are sung true and tunefully, the trees tops nearest start to move, rippling out in a wave like propagation. Satisfied that the Spyrys are dancing happily, the youngster is then hailed aboard by their new crew mates where they join in the shanty of parting. Sure enough, the sails soon billow and they set about their voyage. Many walk through the forests on their return thanking the Spyrys Gwydhenn, hoping to catch a glimpse of their faces bathing in the dappled sunlight, their own songs whispering through their leaves in gentle chorus. Exciting news to share with the launch of some of my artworks from my Other Worlds Tour collection now available to purchase as an NFT (Non-fungible token).
I'm now selling on two marketplaces, Kalamint and Hic et Nunc, both using the Tezos blockchain, a far greener more eco-friendly option that uses Proof of Stake blockchain technology. The decision to mint NFTs has been deliberated for quite some time, mainly due to my unease of the current energy consumption relating to minting with Ethereum. So you can now actually own one of my creations as a digital artwork. The image above shows just a few of my works from my Other Worlds Tour.
The project was very much born out of lockdown tedium, although at the time restrictions were starting to lift, I still felt unnerved at potentially being too near other people on walks but mentally, I needed to escape and roam. So I decided to start touring the universe, well my own universe to be more precise, whilst also further developing my 3d skills in Blender that had very much taken more of a backbench due to Photoshop editing. At first the tour images were merely accompanied by my usual brief descriptions when posting, but as I continued, I started to write a short story with each image, usually what was going through my head at the time of creation. The story then very much became an important part of the artpiece. Characters, species, worlds were born, often initially created on the ceiling as I fall asleep or in dreams. The complete artistic freedom has been liberating, the stories started to intertwine, the timeline is also not fixed. I can move backward and forwards in time, characters stories develop, worlds history explored. There is a connection between all of the images, that will only be fully revealed in the artbook story, but there are already a couple of clues to that in the stories so far for avid readers on my instagram account. When the journey will end I'm not sure, or if it ever will, it's a vast universe and imagination is limitless. The narrative of this piece of concept art creation is "The Sentinel watched as the small entities approached, after a millennia alone, it could not decide if it was relieved, depressed or just bored out of it's AI mind, it had hoped for better".
As you can probably tell from my gallery, I don't have one specific type of art style that I adhere to. What I create depends on many factors from an initial brief for work or for my personal projects, what medium is sparking my imagination on the day. What I call pure digital painting is when I start up the software (Photoshop, Autodesk Sketchbook or Studio Clip Paint Pro or a mix of all three) set a blank canvas, pick up my Wacom Intuos drawing board and start painting, either from imagination or a may have reference photos on a screen at the side or sometimes a split screen on the software. You literally paint every single stroke and choose your colours manually from a colour palette, very much like traditional painting on an easel as often I will work entirely on one layer. I may at the end (or sometimes part way through if I'm not happy with the tones) alter the colour grading and lighting using the power of layer adjustments. Another method I use is photo manipulation, also known as photo compositing or photo bashing, for both art creation and custom portrait work. This can consist of many layers (70 is not unknown) where individual elements are masked and colour graded to create the final image. I also use digital painting or even 3d renders to enhance the composition or create elements that I don't have available by just using photographic stock images. The Sentinel image above is different from both methods I've mentioned, this created entirely in Blender. Using a combination of 3d modelling and material creation to create the scene. Materials on the object are built up using the powerful node system which gives full flexibility to make adjustments that you can see in real time if you're using Evee. The image below shows a very simple material setup used on the floor. Peswarpaw ~ Is a creature from another world, with a slight kink in the evolutionary chain.
As much as I love creating a digital painting from a blank canvas, I also really enjoy photo manipulation. Going through our own stock photos and creating something new from them, quite often very unrelated images that through the creative process and experimentation become a unique new world that doesn't exist in reality. The scene on image above is created from a combination of scenery from around St Ives in Cornwall and a sunset from the Maldives. I then scratched my head for an hour trying to think what subject I would like in the near foreground,I experimented with dolphins and whales but they didn't create the spark my imagination was looking for. After a screen break and one coffee later I thought, this doesn't have to be on earth...the creature can look like anything! That's when the real fun starts. All images used own stock apart from the following: Iguana - by Andrey Gurenko from Pexels, Snake - Mark Broadhurst from Pexels. Longing for freedom he catches the scent of the wild winds with the sun warming his face, for a moment he is in paradise.
I painted this in Clip Studio Paint using mostly pastel style brushes as I wanted added texture and decided on a looser style of painting for this lovely creature. I originally had the background as a much darker rich vibrant colour scheme which I concluded was far too dark and menacing when I reviewed what I thought was the finished painting a few hours later so opted to change the colour scheme and repaint it, any excuse to play with the lovely brushes! Final tweaks were made in Photoshop as I find the adjustment layers are hard to beat in there, particularly Curves and Selective Color for this piece. This digital painting Regal Tiger was created over the course of a week putting in an hour or so between other projects. It's always hard to put the brush (or wacom pen in my case) down and stop fiddling.
All of the initial painting was created in Autodesk Sketchbook which I really like for paint blending, then switching to Photoshop cc 2019 for final colour and lighting adjustments, also for fine details at the end stage. I'll post some of the stages in below. Port Quin is a secluded rocky cove in North Cornwall between Port Isaac and Polzeath. This digital painting was quite a long term project for me as I really wanted to capture the detail as it's a location that means a lot to me.
I grew up in a small village called Trelights which is about a mile and a half away from Port Quin and used to walk down to swim there, I loved the tranquility, especially during the busy summer season in Cornwall. You can still see the ruins of the fisherman's cottages next to the road as it was once a thriving fishing village. The stories told to me when I was a girl said that all the fishermen had broken the Sabbath by going out to sea on the Sunday and all were lost in a huge storm. I'm not sure if this was true but it certainly had a rapid decline. The old fishing cellars are now holiday lets and a local water sports company runs kayaking adventures there now so feels quite a bit busier than when I was young when often I was the only person on the beach! Jelly Rose is a fantasy digital painting, it is a majestic creature with long floating tendrils, which propels itself through the deep oceans leaving a sweet floral scent in the water.
This hybrid creature was painted mainly in Photoshop and finished in Sketchbook. I particularly like some of the textured brushes in Autodesk Sketchbook and the blend modes Glow and Soft Glow were ideal for completing some of the bioluminescent elements. I've included some of the main steps in the creation process in the image below so that you can see how the image builds. As is often the case with my digital paintings, it still starts with a simple concept sketch as you would with traditional paintings. Stage 5 is where I start diverging from traditional methods where I simply used a copy of Stage 4 but used a Gaussian blur to soften the paint strokes and set the blend mode to Screen to lighten the image. For the rest of the painting, choosing brushes, colours and pressure sensitivity for each brush stroke using my Wacom Intuos drawing board and pen builds the final image. |
AuthorPandoraCreates features the artwork of Pandora Rose from Cornwall in the UK. She specialises in Digital Art, Photography Composites & Photo editing. Archives
July 2021
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