Last year, I created a tattoo for the great author Michael T. Huyck, Jr., based on an idea he had (see it here). Being that it was for a tattoo, I created it as a grayscale piece to keep things simple.
As I’m approaching my visit to the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon, I wanted to use the artwork for prints that I could sell. But I also wanted to keep the original illustration for only the client, which I thought was fair. So I decided to rework the image with more color and textures.
Through the magic of WordPress and the internet, I found a plugin that allows the viewer to see images in a before and after sense. Below is the new image and the original, and I thought it would be neat to see them at the same time for comparison.
Note: You might have to give it a bit to load.
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Which, to be honest, I think is a pretty cool trick. As standalone pieces of art, despite their similarity, they are inherently different. It’s not just color, the textures that I added give it a different feel altogether.
I think some of that is certainly in the textures left in the face, and the way that the color enhances part of the character. Certainly, too, just having a lot of color adds a different feeling to the whole piece.
For me, though, it’s the textures around the character that are changing things. It looks like he’s emerging from fire on one side, and ice on the other, which leads right into such a split character. Just by the way the textures seem to wrap around him, it just feels hot (or ice cold). It’s an effect that came about while I was creating it, as with some of my other digital pieces I merely explored what would happen if I tried certain effects.
Here’s the full version, outside of the plugin above. Click on it for a larger version.
