Faery #1 – Marissa

I’ve been putting together the pieces of my first faery today. We’re calling her Marissa after our resident ghost (not a real ghost… just a conceptual entity that we blame for everything that goes missing). When I say “pieces”, I should perhaps explain that I drew her in sections, each the size of a standard sheet of typing paper. To finish the drawing, I’m putting those pieces together in Photoshop. It’s a heifer, too. The file at the moment is clocking in at 216 megs, 6133 pixels wide by 12,353 pixels high (that’s about a 20.5″ by 41″ in print size). I’m doing it large because I’m testing out a concept; that the reduced image will have a wonderful level of detail and depth of color.
I’ve enjoyed this process so far. It’s wonderful to rediscover being an artist. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything seriously that I’d begun to think it was all part of my past. But with this drawing I’m clearly getting the hang of it again. I really can’t describe what it’s like to have a largely dormant part of me thriving in the open air again. My mind is spinning with the possibilities. Not just with drawing itself, but with the notion of being able to print out high resolution posters and prints. Technology has finally caught up with my ambitions.
Of course, ever the one to get ahead of myself, I just downloaded a bunch of Photoshop brushes to use for rendering images for my band. Not that they won’t come in handy elsewhere. But I’ve really been getting my Photoshop chops back up to speed, as well. I rendered a logo for the band that looked pretty damned good, and it was something I cooked up in just a few minutes. I’m all fired up about what I might be able to do with the 300 megs of Photoshop brushes that I’ve downloaded. Especially the fire brushes. Our drummer, Del, is hoping for a design that will look like a ring of fire, in which the flames are being sucked into the center of the design, like maybe into a black hole. This poses a Photoshop challenge, and I’m looking forward to it.
There’s really nothing else to report. I need to finish assembling Marissa so that I can show her off a bit. I’m rather proud of what I’ve done here, because it helps to dispel some of the doubts about whether the skills were still there. Plus, I think that big-assed file in Photoshop is about to bring down my computer.
If you’d like, you can click on the picture of Marissa to see a larger version. If it takes you to something that looks to be the same size, your browser has minimized it. If you mouse over that image you should see a magnifying glass with a “+” mark on it. If you do, click on the image to see it full size. Just keep in mind that there is more tweaking to do. This could be considered a rough version, since I have to fix some things, and I still have to do her wings. All in all, though, it’s not bad so far.