Here’s a short video slideshow showing my creation process for how I go about creating my digital portrait paintings. I know people often say that I’m cheating by using photos as part of the painting, but really that’s one of the main reasons I love creating digital artwork so much. Having the ability to “cheat” on so many levels, and having so much freedom to experiment and explore knowing that I’ve got an undo button—and also having multiple versions of the artwork saved—is what makes digital artwork so exciting for me. Cheating and experimenting is what makes it fun. I actually also think it’s made me a better traditional oil painter. There’s various techniques I’ve experimented with in digital painting that’s saved me a lot of time and money in oil painting. I also think that me being able to paint well in oils--while still choosing to use shortcuts with creating digital art--sort of proves (if even just to myself) that I’m what they’d call a real artist.
This is actually one of my favorite digital paintings that I've done yet. I do most of my digital painting with Corel Painter and a Wacom tablet. The process is mainly painting on layers (Usually many hundreds), and then scratching parts off. Doing this gives it that scratchy/messy/gritty sort of look.
The photo I based this painting on is from a friend of mine, and the song is a Soundgarden cover I found on Soundcloud. Here’s the link to where I found the song: https://soundcloud.com/awigo-knows/fell-on-black-days-soundgarden-cover
Fine art prints and merchandise are available at Society6.
I’ve also written a short story based on this painting called Voices of the Dead. It’s a surreal psychological horror/thriller based in a medieval fantasy setting about a woman exploring an abandoned cathedral of the dead, in search of an old enemy.
It’s available to be downloaded and/or read online for free at Indigo, Wattpad, Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks.
It’s also available for Kindle at Amazon. They won’t let me post stories for free on there, so on Amazon it's a dollar.
For anyone wanting to sign up to my mailing list, I'm giving away a free full resolution digital download of "Born for Battle". It's a very large image, 9000 x 6750 300dpi, and I figured it would be interesting for people to be able to zoom right in to see the details and brushwork. Also, anyone with access to a good printer can print off their own print of it without having to order anything online.
Click on the image below to sign up and get your free download
