As I have mentioned in my previous post, I am kind of a JOAT, mostly because I am a fast learner. Every time I see something that looks cool and fun to do, I immediately reverse engineer it on my head, or find tutorials online if I got time and Internet access. That leads us to today's point of interest: painting.
Every August, the Philippines celebrates Hospital Month. As an employee, I look forward to this event every year. One of the activities that I got my eye on is the Acrylic Painting Contest. To those who really know me, like my wife, I really like joining contests. Mostly art and creativity related competitions. The competitive side of me really gets going once I get started. Just to give you an idea, I am just a casual painter. My painting experience, medium wise(acrylic on canvass), is limited to the contests I previously joined(3 times). I haven't found the time and resources yet to do it on a regular basis.
For this year, the mechanics was announced a week earlier. The theme was underwater OR floral landscape. In my mind, I thought about how to combine both. So I started with my usual process by creating an image composite of what I want my painting to look like, using stock photos found on Google. I used the Autodesk Sketchbook app on my android phone to do the composite.
Stock photos found on Google
Composite image made on Sketchbook app
As you can see, what I want to achieve is like a combination of the two themes with a hint of surrealism. Also, I am a fan of the multiverse theory, so I really like incorporating it on my work.
On the actual day, I just applied what I learned from the online tutorials when I started working on my piece. I also sent some progress pictures to my wife as I went along. Apologies for the poor quality of the following images:
Decided to add the triangle with a sunflower farm inside it.It can be viewed upside down, because the triangle represents the doorway to the parallel universe
After 5 hours, this is the final result:
"Over Under Surreal Traveler, 2021"
Enhanced on Lightroom
Time really flies when you are doing something fun. The contest was scheduled for a whole day but I still had work that afternoon. As much as I wanted to continue painting, I just finished it that way and went to the office afterwards.
This is the first time that I painted on a canvass this size(24"x36") and it is overwhelming for a casual painter. I really wanted to explain my concept but it mainly revolves around my opinion on local politics.
I leave the interpretation to you.
Anyways, thank you for your time reading this post. If you reached this far comment down below the emoji 🎨
See you on my next post!
Fin