Sorrow's Hold Alternate Pose

I've been playing around with a new program, trying to get some pieces together for an art competition. Part of the contest rules state that I cannot send in previously published work, however since I've decided to go with a different pose I think I can freely publish this alternate piece.

Sorrow's Hold Alternate Pose

The story behind the image is that I was listening to Evanescence's recent album and two songs merged together to project this flash of an angel holding a dead man, the angel herself was going to fall from Grace for the man but he died before she could take the leap. Her sorrow, anger and grief lead to her burning down the cathedral around them. The two songs that merged in my head to generate the flash of the image are SORROWS HOLD, hence the title of this piece, and  END OF THE DREAM.

To construct this piece I created the background by freehand on  paper then took a picture of it and then used Photoshop CS6 to color it and give it texture. The models of the piece are from my new software program that I am still trying to figure out, Poser Debut.

*Poser Debut is a condensed software package of the Poser 3D animation software, just like Photoshop Elements is the condensed software package of Photoshop CS6, it has it's quirks but what software program doesn't. My major complaints about the program are you are either stuck with the prepackaged models and props or you go to the Poser website and buy more, and there are no PDF or print manuals to have as a reference only video tutorials to give you a "how to" guide. Poser Debut is a good program for amateurs like myself that think mechanically using X,Y,Z coordinates to pose the models in the program and if you just want a generic pose to see what a scene could look like. I like the benefit of being able to pose my computer models in front of a "green screen" and exporting the rendered picture as a jpeg or psd file and using those in Photoshop, but some of the program does not want to cooperate with what I see in my head. Though I do look at it this way, I'm glad I only paid around $40 for Poser Debut to find all of this out and spend less time Google-ing reference photos as to paying full price for the full version of Poser. 

Not easy being green

I was playing around with the leaf shapes for the face and the gradient tool for the background in Photoshop. I like the near mirror effect it has but still draws your eyes all over the image.

LOVERS

LOVERS

I look into her oceans

I kiss her islands

and hills along the way.

I crest over her mountains,

and glide across her plain.

I settle in her valley,

and spread my rays of light.

Creating new life together;

Her arms stretch for me,

for one more embrace.

I look upon her face,

waters glisten upon her shores.

But not long can I stay,

I must begin the new day.

By Angela Way

©December 7, 2007

The above poem is what I had entered into a contest and was given an editor's choice award for, to go with this poem I decided to create an image to go with it. In the poem I am personifying Mother Earth and the Sun as lovers to show this I used a reddish hair color for the male model, which ended up being my actual hair color that I used from a photo of myself and using the clone stamp tool as a paint brush created the male model's hair. As for the female model I tried to use earth tones including some blues to represent the oceans and seas. This is what I came up with:

Man, it's what's for dinner.

Gladiator Versus Gargoyles

I used iguanas and a frilled lizard for the winged gargoyles, the model was a picture of a body builder.

Diana Bathing

Diana Bathing

This is the depiction of one of my favorite mythology stories, the goddess Diana bathing and Actaeon stumbling across her. This is the moment right before she catches him and turns him into a stag. Too bad his own hunting dogs ate him.

Arabian Nights

 

Arabian Nights

I designed the window nook and the faux Taj Mahal in AutoCAD then added the color sketch of the model and painted the rest in Photoshop.

Let the taste expel you

Eve's Hot Apple Cider, let the taste expel you.

Hearts

I like how this one turned out to look like the iris of an eye but those hearts 

were very difficult to line up.

ROYGBIV

Playing with the shape tool once again I think I went a bit Looney Tunes with this one.
My color scheme was based on the light spectrum anagram
ROY G BIV, and if you weren't aware of what that stands for it's:
Red Orange Yellow Green  Blue Indigo Violet.

Ohio Affiliated Logo

I was asked to create a logo for a friend's hip hop crew and through a result of just playing around with the letters this became the logo for Ohio Affiliated or O.A. for short.

My friend liked it so well that it became one of his tattoos.

Joe McGregor with O.A. Tattoo.
Picture taken by Cecelia McGregor.

Celebrity Portraits

TI

I started off doing celebrity portraits because my little cousin had wanted a poster the celebrity that she was looking for was TI. Well I went on a search for a poster of TI and unfortunately could not find one, so I decided to draw it justifying the portrait of TI as a way of practicing male faces.

JASON ALDEAN

Then the next request was for Jason Aldean by another little cousin.

SAM WORTHINGTON

I then set a challenge of selecting the next celebrity and adding a background of my own. My choice was Sam Worthington. As I was drawing I was afraid that the background would look more like bricks than film strips so I decided to angle the film strips in various directions. I even managed to slip Jake Sully's tattoo into one of the film strips.

NICHELLE NICHOLS

When I found out that Nichelle Nichols was going to be at Gen Con Indianapolis I decided I was going to make a celebrity portrait of her and take it with me. I admire her Star Trek performances as Lt. Uhura and her work for NASA. She was shocked because I handed her a photo that wasn't in her official photos for autographs and even gave me the compliment that my work was fantastic. Ms Nichols was even gracious enough to autograph my copy and was a bit surprised that I gave her a copy of the portrait.

Me on the left, Ms Nichols in the center and the Mayfair Games attendant on the right, I didn't catch his name, but yes Sir, I created the portrait.

LIL WAYNE

Another request was of Lil Wayne, I groaned stating that the tattoos were going to be a problem. I was asked if it was because he had tattoos? My response was "No it's that he has so many tattoos that I would have to match." Fortunately, I was able to find a ESPN photo shoot picture where he was in a suit covering up most of his tattoos, I then had to go to a website dedicated to his tattoos to make sure I had the tattoos spelled correctly and in their proper position, I believe he has added more since the photo shoot and could possibly be getting another tattoo as people read this entry. I decided to use his lyrics of the young girl's favorite song to frame the picture and used quarter and half notes as quotation marks. My only disappointment with this picture is that the computer turned the jacket into a matte gray instead of the shiny silver it truly is.

Breast Cancer Awarness

Inspired by Ford's Warriors in Pink campaign I decided to put together pink camouflage and a pink ribbon.

Blue Lotus

BLUE LOTUS

I like to play with shapes when looking at a blank piece of paper in my hands or a blank electronic canvas on the computer screen. One of my favorite ways of playing with shapes is to create compass circles that can create various floral designs or pinwheel effects. I then decided one night to attempt to create this effect in Photoshop. Rotating the circle shape and overlapping it several times, and merging the shape layers, resulted in creating a frame I was then able to delete what I didn't need and fill in each petal individually with the gradient tool. This is one of my other favorites.