This has been a tough couple of weeks in many ways. And it’s not helped by the fact that one of my idols, Frank Frazetta, passed away a couple of days ago.

Speaking of idols, Samwise Didier (Wikipedia article, Profile on Sons of the Storm) is probably the one artist who has had the most influence on my own development as an artist. I remember as a kid spending hours just staring at the illustrations in the Warcraft 2 manual, meticulously copying the drawings and dreaming of the day when, maybe I too, would be skilled enough to draw just like my idol and namesake “Sam”. I was about half way thru this painting when I realized that I was drawing something i had seen before.

And that is when I saw how everything was connected.

I often talk about how I try to tell a story with the symbolism in my images, but sometimes I feel like I don’t really control what ends up on the canvas. That the images I draw are more of a creation of my subconcious and not really the result of some master plan. It is certainly true that nothing I draw turns up the way I intended it from the beginning. I struggle with this issue a lot and it’s largely my inexperience and lack of talent as an artist which leads to this. But part of it is simply because I allow myself to go where my subconcious tell me to go. So it’s become more and more clear to me that my work probably to some degree is reflecting my inner wishes and desires or whatever it is my mind currently happens to be preoccupied with. So when I connected the dots from my idol and namesake (and some other symbolism which I leave as an exercise for the reader to figure out :P) to this painting I realized that this image was really about me. Specifically, I imagined that the more human character was me and the more brutish “lizard” was the demon/s I’ve been fighting. And I gave the painting the title: “Uphill Battle” because that is exactly what it illustrates, in more ways than one, it is an allegory for that battle which I have been fighting for the past few weeks and months.

The question is, if that flash bomb is supposed to be my last hope to win my metaphorical battle, then what exactly does it represent? I would very much like to know.

I created a time-lapse video series which show how I painted this painting. You can watch all five episodes here.

I have been incubating this image in my head ever since I returned from my trip to Asia. I was inspired by the religious Hindu art I saw in Singapore and Malaysia to draw a deity in the same style. Now, I should mention that while it is not unusual for me to “get inspired” by various things, this is one of those things that just sort of stuck in my head for the longest time. The problem I had was that while it was a very strong feeling of inspiration I felt, the image in my head was not forming into anything tangible. But then about a week ago I started sketching on a picture of Ganesha and at first I was not very happy with it as I felt I was reinventing the wheel so to speak by drawing an image of a deity that has been depicted thousands of times in the past in every conceivable style and pose. And that is when I realized that what I wanted to create was not a traditional Hindu deity, but one of my own imagination. And once I had come to that realization, the image of a Hindu/Buddhist deity with the head of a elk was not very far away.

I wanted to tie the image to my own Finnish roots so the elk seemed like a perfect fit seeing that a special kind of elk, The Elk of “Hiisi” (Finnish: Hiiden Hirvi), is featured in the tales of the national epic Kalevala. Hiiden Hirvi was a powerful elk created by the forest deities known as “Hiisi” from the life essence of the forest. “Hiisi” literally means “a sacred place of worship” but is also the name of the spirits that live in these places. In the story the hero has to capture this elk alive to prove himself worthy to marry the daughter of Louhi (Mistress of Pohjola).

I used my sketch of Ganesha as a base and kept the dancing pose but added a couple extra arms (Hiiden Hirvi is said to have six legs, I figure six arms is just as good) and invented my own Mudras for the hands. I replaced Ganesha’s famous broken tusk with a broken piece of horn and replaced Ganeshas favourite fruit with a Karelian pasty which I think is the perfect Finnish-Asian-cross-over-food (rye bread with rice filling). Once I had these key features everything else just fell into place naturally.

Karelian pasty! :D Om nom nom nom!

You might be thinking that it doesn’t look much like an elk/moose though (besides the horns). This is due to that special ingredient that I like to add to my art which I call “The WHAT THE F*CK Component”. This is also the reason why I can’t draw a normal bellybutton or cover up man-boobs (what can I say? I love drawing nipples). I mean why is he crying and smiling at the same time? I have no idea. I just flow with the ideas I get in my head. In general, what my imagination comes up with is very dependent on what music I am listening to when I paint. When it comes to the weirdness here, the album Silent Shout by The Knife comes to mind (Spotify playlist). I like listening to this when I paint late at night, and just immense myself in the dark black echoes from the deep forests of the North.

Forest Guardian is one of those pieces that just didn’t work out too well in the anatomy department, but I’m still happy I finished it. You can really tell I was struggling with it in the time-lapse videos. It took roughly 13 hours to paint, but as always when I make these videos the real time it took was much longer due to the post processing and editing of the actual video.

As is often the case with my art this painting just “evolved” from a speed painting session. Even though it only took 9 hours I have been working on this for about a week now in my spare time, painting for about an hour at a time. This has allowed me to actually reflect on my painting a lot more and to analyze and prepare my next painting session. The only thing I had in mind when I started painting was this pair of eyes and this particular face of a woman that I just had to get out of my head. The image then naturally moved into an image of an angel and when I was working with the composition I saw the witch.

Just like my Medusa painting, this painting tells the story of a woman who is wrongfully accused and condemned. I gave the painting the title “Rebirth” as it tells the story of a Witch that is drowned by a mob and is reborn as a crow. The image is essentially about the power struggle between men and women.

Her tattoo is an Ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol which represents “eternal life”. She gains eternal life in the afterlife (or if you will she turns immortal and escapes death as a crow/angel). As a Venus symbol it obviously represents her womanhood. It is no coincidence that the mob consists of men and the wrongfully accused is a woman. The jewelery on her wings are made of silver, which can symbolize a number of different things. As a symbol for “purity” it represents her innocence. Silver is also a “holy” metal and is used to shackle bad spirits.

The cross obviously represents Christianity and the Inquisition. However, what you see in the image is actually the reflection of a cross. In a sense it is an inverted cross, which is often used by satanists. In my painting it symbolizes the darker aspects of Christianity and religion in general.

Quite surprisingly, this painting makes more sense if you look at it upside down…

And even more surprisingly the composition works quite well upside down as well, doesn’t it? The “mob” comes more into focus and it is as if we are under the water looking up and not above the waters surface looking at the reflection of the mob. She is sitting upside down, kinda like how vampires are depicted as sitting upside down in the ceiling like bats. I’m almost tempted to print it and hang it on my wall in such a way that I can spin it around easily and just flip it whenever I feel like. Drive people mad. My signature also kinda says “sɐɯ 5006″ (wonder what that means to a numerologist?). Too bad it’s not the year “999″ or that my name isn’t “Alucard”. :D

You might wonder why the wing is not attached to her back. I see it as if the wing grows out from her hair and she is in the middle of the metamorphosis stage so the wing can be just about anywhere. It’s called artistic freedom. :P

This painting took two and a half hours to paint using Photoshop CS3. This was actually my first time using CS3 (been using Elements 2 for many years) so I had some unexpected results. The time-lapse video above runs at roughly 45x the normal speed.

As the title suggests, the creature depicted in this painting is a mix breed. He is half centaur and half satyr. I had been toying with a bunch of different ideas before I started painting and I struggled with the conflicting ideas I had. The end result I think is kinda interesting - a mix between compromise and new ideas which evolved naturally from the creative process. I started out with the intension of drawing a centaur but he kinda evolved into a more demon-like creature.

Click the images below for some detail shots:

A portrait of the actress Christina Ricci. I’m very happy with how this turned out. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull of the hair but it was actually quite uncomplicated in the end.

I have compiled a WIP (Work In Progress) series which shows the picture at different stages of development. Click the links below to view the WIP:

A loosely rendered portrait of the actress Natalie Portman.

EDIT: 2007-05-30 Spent an extra 15 minutes with the smudge tool to smooth out the skin so I wouldn’t look like a “burn victim”.

Roughly 4 hours in the making.