Introduction:
“Happiness is a Blue Bird that one afternoon settled on our warm palm and left us something like a trace of a lost paradise that never was reached by anyone and that everyone dream with at some moment, sleeping or in wakefulness”.
Concept:
From some time ago I was interested on making an allegoric picture with the theme of happiness, or happiness’ absence. The idea was making a stimulating, oniric image, that together with the title and the shown elements, allowed the watchers to make their own interpretation about what they see. The image moves us to that lost paradise, home of the blue birds (that symbolize happiness), todiscover with our own eyes how a mysterious figure go exterminating everyone of these beautifulbirds. On the original idea, the intention is getting the watch to feel as playing part of the scene, since we see the “happiness hunter” making a break on his path of death, when he realizesabout our presence. Are we just watchers of a dream or are we the hunting mates?
Sketches:
Designing a hunting day – I normally use to work with colour sketches, but in that work I startedfrom a really basic initial sketch, mainly for making a little study of the lighting and thegeneral composition of the scene. The dusk light gives the environment a welcoming aspect, inopposition with the character. Independently of the the scene’s sketch, I worked on the main figure’s design, the hunter. On the first designs the clothes were more prepare and the hat wornhas adorned with the blue birds’ feathers, but I finally decided to give him a more sober and less smart aspect.
Main Painting and details:
Using pencil – The first step of the final image is the drawing. We keep the same composition that we have on the initial sketch, separating the image in to two parts, on one side the main figureand on the opposite side the forest clearing, where the last birds escape. During the drawingprocess, I made the definitive changes on the hunter’s design. For the forest we make the drawingof the principal lines of the trunks and we just insinuate the place where we will set the leavesmass, but it will be on the colour phase when we will detail the branches and vegetation.
Applying the paint:
The following process is the same that on my previous works, with some differences. We create twolayers over the pencil drawing. A normal layer that will be filled with white and a multiplying layer, where we will apply the colour. The white layer will be hidden while we are painting andits function will be to eliminate the line drawing as we are progressing on the colour work. For choosing the colours we will use the HSB Slider tools. It is very comfortable to work with thisand making changes of colour and shades is quick and easy.
It is time to front the colour layer. We start painting quickly all the scene, with colour stains, with no details, for getting a global vision of the scene’s tone. On this rough colouringwe can use Dry Media Brushes for creating some bas texture. We will use through the drawing normalbrushes mainly, and it is on the vegetation zone where we will create special brushes. On theinitial phase we will paint basically the trees main trunks and we will mark with colour stains theleaves masses. Once we have applied a good colour base we start adding shades and marking themwith more detail light and shadow zone; we will also create a more detailed vegetation and willpaint branches and little leaves. For this we will activate the brush size by pressure option.with no doubt, the more complicated part of the image is the vegetation, for the great amount of details and shades; that is the reason why we will go more deeply into this point.
