I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I love to explore the multiple possibilities of a single image.
This image, entitled ‘The Spirited Drifter’ is a great example of what I mean by this. Over all I am presenting 107 images here. Actually, 108 if you include the quick line sketch which is where this image started. Ok, OK 109 if you include the featured image above.
This example of image exploration is just scratching the surface. In all honesty, these are just colour and tonal explorations. Imagine multiplying that by a slew of subtle graphic adjustments, then saving those files as individual images. Then adding numerous and major graphic updates where upon more tonal and colour enhancements are introduced etc. The possibilities are infinite. It could bend your head just thinking about it. There’s also something exciting and beautiful in the grouping of these images in a way that you can scan across them all, view and appraise them against each other.
I posted 9 of these images in a grid formation to an art forum recently. It was a single image made out of multiple images. Someone referenced that I had presented it in a ‘Pop Art’ kind of way. I had never really thought about it in those terms, but I suppose when you consider Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ or his ‘Marilyn Diptych’ silkscreen artwork, you can see the connection.
Multiple versions of one image can also be seen in the brilliant artwork made be Takashi Murakami. His ‘Flower Superflat’ is a fine example of how well this can work. The same graphic, multiple colour variation, all put together to form one image. Quite marvellous if you ask me.
It was never my intention to create Pop Art. But in a way, I guess that’s what I’ve been doing.
© EMELBI 2023 – All Rights Reserved
Initial Line Prompt Sketch
One of the challenges that I have set myself recently is to do 100 drawings in a day. The target is to do this twice a week. At the end of the week I will have a lot of material to chose from with the idea to form new work. The drawings don’t have to be complicated or detailed necessarily, just a generation of some strong ideas. Sketches that might spark an idea or have the beginnings of a strong character. My intention is to do them quickly but in a considered way, using reference material and photographs as well as forming randomly made up characters. This is where the above sketch came from. I thought it was strong enough to develop and it eventually turned into this mini project.
Procreate Edit
Procreate Edit – Colour Versions
Post Procreate, Photoshop Edit
Photoshop Edit – Colour Versions
Final – Zombie Edits
See how the illustration came together in the video below
