Modern Eros

Eros, mischievous and charismatic is the Greek god of lust, love, and intercourse. He was also worshipped as a fertility deity. In some myths, he was not only the force of erotic love but also the creative urge of nature, the firstborn light that is responsible for the coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos.

He had two kinds of arrows: one was golden with dove feathers that caused instant love; the other was lead with owl feathers that caused indifference.

I wanted to make Eros a bit more modern and opted for feather tattoos instead of traditional wings like his Roman equivalent, Cupid. He could be someone you run into on the street, crewcut and funky facial hair but still classical features. The background is a bit cheesy but I ran out of ideas for it.

Give me your comments and let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy...

Paintings by Jacques Sultana

Do yourself a favour and check out the beautiful work by French artist, Jacques Sultana.

Jungle Boy: Final

The Loin King catching some rays in a sunny spot of the forest. The object of this project was to learn how to abstract a figure to a cartoon style image and try and create a more espressive face. Also, to try and create the illusion of depth with the fore, middle and background. Not a traditional loin cloth, realized too late it should have been more of a tattered flap of cloth, but some VPL showing. There should be more cast shadows and colour on his body from reflective light, but I am bored with this for the moment. (Click to enlarge)

Jungle Boy: Preview

Jungle Boy: Part 3

The third and final installment. To eliminate the hard edges between colours I do the following in Photoshop. Using the colour picker, I pick one of the two colours next to each other (or hold down Alt while in brush mode to toggle between brush and picker). Now the brush gives me a value in between the two colours which can be used to blend them together. The next part involves colour picking and blending like crazy until the transitions between colours are smoother but still looks "painted" (image 1). Some more detail gets added to the background (image 2) and I am done with the small version of this image. The image is scaled back up to its original dimensions. Some pixelation will occur but I am left with a good guide to start painting on at a higher resolution. Now the real work starts. I delete the line art layer and replace it with the clean line art from the original file. The next part is hard to describe but basically involves lots of colour picking, blending and smudging to make it a lot smoother and remove any pixelation. More detail is added and working in other colours for reflective lights and shadows. Working in Photoshop also allows me to play around with different filters and effects. The final version will be posted soon...