Lady Of The Night. (A one off original piece of artwork.

[SheHawk 198]

Before I post the image. I need to explain the origins behind it. Sometime back in my mid twenties, or there abouts. Sorry that I cannot recall my exact age at the time I started work on the picture that you are about to see. I know for certain that I was in my twenties when I did it. For the life of me, I simply cannot remember the exact age I was, when I had created the artwork. Way long before I got into doing 3D Models. I loved to draw, mostly copy draw. Example: Copy an image of a Superhero: Superman. But I did come to learn how to draw things from my own imagination and as unusual as this may sound to you. I used mostly felt-tip pens and permanent pen markers as my medium to work with instead of oil paints.

Crayons were okay to a point, colouring pencils too. But on the whole, I simply liked the vibrant colours of the felt-tip pens more than anything. I really can't say why. I know that might sound odd. But then again, I'm a very odd kind of a person. But do not let that put you off me, I can't help being odd, I was simply born that way and it is a very intrinsic part of my very nature. So please don't judge me. Okay, with that all out of the way. Here is what lead to the moment of my completed artwork, befoer I show it to all of you here.

First off. The movie The Crow had just been released and I was very taken back by the movie poster that I saw on display. Which I think was this one.

The Crow: Movie Poster

Anyway, I saw the movie and I absolutely loved it. I loved the face make up of the character Eric/The Crow. I had a movie magazine with a picture of Brandon Lee in his Crow Make up. This is what inspired my art work.

Brandon Lee: Crow Make up.

At the time I did not have any A4 sized art paper, but I did have three medium sized pieces of blank card, which I had intend to use them individually at the time, but I was stuck as with what to draw on them. Just then I got a sudden idea. What if I draw the face of the Crow. The pieces of card was not big enough for what I wanted, I can't remember their exact size now, sorry to say. I wish I had made a note of when I did the artwork and the size of the pieces of card that I used. And Yes, I decided to use all three of them, by gluing all of them together, to make one big canvas, if you will. I first started out drawing what was going to be originally the image of the actual crow bird from the movie, but I thought, would it not be cool if I could somehow use that image and make it seem to blend in with the Crows makeup. But trying to do the wingspan of the actual crow bird did not turn out as I had hoped it would, by this time however, I had drawn a faint outline of where the head was going to be and I really did not want to rub out my mistake.

Rubbing things out drawn in pencil can have it's drawbacks, marks of where I had previously drawn, once rubbed out. However, show up and I really did not want that, as I wanted the picture to be my best piece of artwork ever made. I had only ever done a few drawings at best. About 4 pictures in total, as best as I can recall now, sorry my memorry is not quite what it once used to be, it's partly because of old age I guess, but for the most part, I feel that my problem could be tied in someway to my mental illness, some, but not all of my memories are jumbled up, or gone missing, for whatever reason. I have worked very long and hard to try and retrieve those missing memories to the best of my ability to do so. Sadly some of them are still missing and unfortunately I really can't aford to go and see a hypnotist to help me to try and recover those memories.

I consider myself very lucky of the things that I can actually remember and to be able to remember them very well. Anyway, I thought to myself, maybe I can work around the problem that I had. I did just exactly that, though the top part of the head had become a helmet. But I wasn't about to try and change it, so I carried on, I did the nose and then the lips, it was not until I had finished drawing them that they had taken on a feminine form, which was not what I had intended to do. Yes, my drawing was not going quite the way I wanted it to go. But a partof me felt like, what the heck! Just carry on what I am doing and see how the whole thing turns out. It was an odd thought to be sure, but I went ahead and I began to work on doing the hair coming out from underneath the helmet, then for reasons unknown to me, I had decided to draw a sort of pendant around the neck of the face that I had drawn.

Please don't ask me why. My imagination was on a whole different level at the time. I first tried to colour the hair in perminant black ink, but both of my permanent markers ran out during the colouring process. There was no way to correct what I had already done of course. So I had to cover it up. I tried using black wax crayon. But the crayon kept breaking and falling appart, same thing happned when I had to use a skin tone like colour wax crayon for the face. Which I will explain shortly. The coloured in crayon parts was a literal mess. I thought there and then that my entire artwork was completely ruined. But I just remembered that I had some spare plain black card, for some reason. If I recall corectly, I had gotten for some odd reason, 3 sheets of plain white card, 3 sheets of black and 3 sheets of red card. I have absolutely no idea what I had in mind to use them for. Anyway, I had the fantastic idea to cut the shape of the card out, to match the outline of the hair that I had drawn and coloured in and glued thw two pieces of black card over the hair pieces.

I had done the face in pencil colour at first, but the colour did not seem to stand out too well to me personally, so I went over that with a near skin tone colour for the face instead. I did the outline of the lips with a red ink pen and coloured them in with a red pencil. I then coloured the pendant yellow, though I could have gone for a gold coloured marker pen. But for some reason I chose yellow for the colour of the pendant and an odd one it is too. But that was the whole point of it. Why? Like I said, my imagination was on a whole different level. I did the background next using only permanent marker pens to create a sort of aura around the characters head. I went for a spiky like affect, as that seemed ot me to be a good idea at the time. I used a felt-tip pen for the eyes and to my horror, I had coloured over what was meant to be the white of the eyes. I could not undo it, the only thing that I had was a Tipp-Ex Jar/Correction Fluid. So I took the brush out of it, trimmed it as so it was as near to being pencil thin like, because I was going to let the liquid drop down onto the eyes and I did not want the Tipp-Ex to come out as one huge white blob.

I had to hold my hand steady and carefuly aply the Tipp-Ex to the eyes. To my reliefe, small white blobs came out and they formed a small solid round ball. Which by accident, only looking at the picture after finishing it. The small ball like typex gave the white of the eyes an almost 3D like effect.

To which I was completely blown away by. To which I hope you all agree with that statement, though it is difficult to see that effect in the photo. I honestly tried to get a better picture of my artwork since the original photograph of it had been taken. But for reasons I do not know why or understand, no matter what I did, the image simply would not turn out right. It was blurred with every shot that I tried to take and I even used the Auto feature on my talbet which means it would use auto features built into the camera, like focus and contrast, etc. But no, just plain no. The image kept coming out as badly blurred at best. So there was only one last thing that I could do. Which was to make a copy of the original photograph that I had taken of my completed artwork and try to improve the quality of the photograph as best as possible. You be the judge, I will include here both the Improved version of the photo and the original photo.

For me personally, the as near to it, as possible, improved version is better, yes it looks darker in contrast, simply because the artwork is behind glass and I can just about be seen through the reflection of the glass. (See Original Photograph) The colours also look a bit faded too. In truth felt tip colouring is bound to age a lot more than oil paint. With that said, it is my deepest hope to one day have the picture taken out of its frame and for me to try as best as possible to restore the faded colours, if it is at all possible.

Original photograph: Lady Of The Night

 

Improved Quality Photograph: Lady Of The Night.

Edited October 12, 2022 by SheHawk

[gogoblender 3,068]

I saw the Crow... loved it... the whole movie and his death was a calamitous occasion and myth back then ... and I especially love that long tube coming out down from under his mouth... I cant help but see the similarity tween Sandman which we have ADORED and fallen in love with ...and just a few episodes in AND

 

...wait for it...the kids mask from BrightBurn... know it? Gruesome take on the superhero origian series...

 

And ...the lovecraftian monsters in Sacred 2...remember those ^

[SheHawk 198]

On 10/12/2022 at 2:36 PM, gogoblender said:

I saw the Crow... loved it... the whole movie and his death was a calamitous occasion and myth back then ... and I especially love that long tube coming out down from under his mouth... I cant help but see the similarity tween Sandman which we have ADORED and fallen in love with ...and just a few episodes in AND

 

...wait for it...the kids mask from BrightBurn... know it? Gruesome take on the superhero origian series...

 

And ...the lovecraftian monsters in Sacred 2...remember those ^

So sorry for the late reply Gogo. Thank you ever so much for the comment by the way. I was also at first a little confused by the refrence you made about the tube coming down from under the mouth. Yes it does look like that. Though I had never given that part of the neck that much thought. It is long and it really does look like a tube. But like I said, back then when creating this, any mistakes that were made, rather than trying to correct it. I just did a work around with what came out. If I were to try and do the same image now. In all honesty, I would end up going through several sheets of paper or card, just to get everything as near perfect as possible.

True, I wanted what I was doing to be my best ever work possible, the only real problem was that I pretty much did not want to ruin my work by trying to over correct it. Anyway, the Lady has a long slender neck of which the odd looking pendant around her neck may look as though it is a part of the neck itself but that was not the actual intention. It is funny that you said his face, when the face of what I had drawn is female in nature. Not that I am saying that it is not male either, but when it came to naming my art work Lady Of The Night,  that was what had come to me and so that is what had stuck. In a twist of irony however, like I said, the face was supposed to be that of Brandon Lee with the Crow Make-Up on. That of course did not turn out to be the case and the male features had taken on the form to that of a female like one, though not deliberate, but I kept it the way that it came out.

I am not upset that you see a male face, just if that is the case. And not to wory if you meant her instead of of his. Art to a point is subjective to the person looking at it, if I have gotten that right? My apologies if not. I know for sure that abstract art is very subjective to what a person sees. This said, I honeslty do no tmind if you or anyone sees a male or a female face. It even could be gender neutral, the gender of the face doesn't really matter and if you want to call my art work Man Of The Night, good on you. I'm happy though with what I have named it and I would not want to change that for all the world.

 

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by SheHawk
Made a massive stupid mistake at the end and I am truly deeply sorry