Umbrella
Umbrella is a piece heavily inspired by the horror games being released at the time, but my main inspiration for this was the monsters found in the Resident Evil series. The piece’s title is itself a reference to the series, as the main antagonistic force in the games is known as the Umbrella Corporation. I was also experimenting with different facial structures within my creature illustrations, so drawing inspiration from those games helped me expand my creative thinking process when it came to thinking of new and interesting ways to morph the human skull. All in all, this was one of my favourite pieces, even though it did come during a fairly rough time in my life, as the pandemic had just broken out and I had been working a very unsatisfying job at the time to make it through.
Beelzebub
I painted this photo after my first time reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The book, especially at the end, made me wonder what a demon that could push these children into these primal states may look like. It was in retrospect fairly obvious though when you consider the name of the book as a reference to the demon Beelzebub. I have always been interested in creature design, so I took it as a challenge. I used animalistic textures such as leather, bone, and open wounds to create the almost collage-like effect created by overlaying all of these images with the colour, as well as the highlights and lowlights.
The Puckered Man
This was a piece I created when I first got into the work created by Trevor Henderson, also known as slimyswampghost. He is the creator behind such digital paintings as the ones in the Sirenhead series or the ones in The Man With The Upside-Down Face series. His “found-footage” style of painting that appears in the majority of his works inspired me heavily with this project, and lead me to attempt creating something in that vein. First, I took some photos of a dark storage room and imported them into Photoshop. I then painted a rough approximation of the creature I had sketched for the project on a layer above the image. From there I added some grain, blur, and a bit of chromatic aberration just to add a bit of flair. I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process behind this piece very much, especially considering it was an homage to one of my favorite artists online!
Hamladius (Self Portrait)
I am very pleased with how this project came out. For class, I was tasked with creating a “Photoshop Self-Portrait.” For this, I wanted to accentuate my style of illustration inside the medium of digital painting as much as possible. To do this, I used crosshatching for the shading to give the illustration its depth, as well as its gritty aesthetic. I also used image overlays to help give the image a more uncanny appeal to it through the use of realism in a more cartoonish setting. Overall, I just wanted to add as much of myself as possible inside of this piece as I could stylistically, as well as literally through the use of image overlays.
30's Style
This project was an exercise in creating a piece with a more light hearted tone, while still maintaining a grittier appearance. I looked back on some of the other work I had been doing at the time, and decided I would attempt to go with a more cartoonish complexion. This piece was extremely fun to make, and really let me feel a lot more loose and relaxed with my approach. This piece is also in part responsible for the creation of Hamboy as both a character, and an idea! Overall, this was a cornerstone piece in my artistic journey and really helped my start to really define my style of work.
