Coupon code – spring18 – is good for 25% off your entire order at the Arsenic Lullaby Online Store. The store loads slow AF, we’re working on it.
***this particular code DOES work with original art***
WINTER MADNESS HAS PASSED
For most of my life I didn’t believe in crap like seasonal affective disorder. Not to the degree that it can be debilitating in any substantial way. But lemme tell you, I don’t do well in the winter. It’s draining, exhausting, depressing, it’s hard to make decisions, nearly impossible to stay focused on anything and one day just bleeds into the next. As much as I am a prime example of it s.a.d. …I’m starting to think it may be more in your head than in the amount of vitamin D you’re not absorbing from the sun.
…okay, this’ll help explain. I was about done with this illustration for a H.P. Lovecraft trading card set.
looks okay but the composition…is technically not good. Since this job is mostly in your head, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that, you want to guard against making things that only you see the charm in.
From what I can get my brain to remember, you determine the sweet spot of a image by drawing a line diagonal all the way across in one direction, then make diagonal lines from the other corners to make 90-30-60 triangle.
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then you make a square and that’s the central focus of the eye…or something like that, really it’s just the center of the picture so whatever.
You don’t have to jam the important stuff into that spot, but you need to be aware of the eye starting there. and what’s there on this image? a whole lot of nothing.
Originally I was going to have a tidal wave behind him but as small as this will be when reproduced…it just wasn’t going to look good. BUT, I figure it could use something behind him to keep t from being basically two different scenes stacked together. I put some buildings in there, and it looks good. connects him and the city and people together nicely….but doesn’t really do jack squat about the sweet spot problem. I like it, but that technical problem is still there.
I gave the second set of buildings a different vanishing point to give it a little subliminal movement. But that’s neither here nor there in solving that composition problem.
Soooo…why does it look fine? maybe there’s some relationship between the ovals top and bottom that’s helping?
Whatever they are doing visually, it doesn’t change the fact that the sweet spot in unutilized and there is a big divide between the top and bottom.
are the wings doing something? or the planets?
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not really. Lemme see those vanishing points again.
Maybe it’s the vanishing points from both sides helping this somehow?
…
I decided to sleep on it. THEN, the next day, I get up and get going and hear on the radio…the first spring season baseball game of the year starting. Spring training? and my brain said “holy f*ck, it’s almost spring!” and just like that, the weight of the world was off my shoulders, and my focus, energy, motivation, came back and everything was fine. and I look at this…
and says “it looks good, what’s the f8cking problem? Maybe it’s good because there are two different things visually separated…who the hell knows why something looks good? scan the fucker and let’s go, we got like three months of shit to do.”
…I’ve been much better since spring training started.
Oh and by the way, while looking for something else on my computer, I saw this guide for what’s known as the “golden ratio” as set in a rectangle.
The golden ratio is a way of dividing things visually that is seen a lot in nature and used in architecture. It’s a ratio that the eye always finds compelling.
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…Oh for F*CKS SAKE.
Not that I need reassurance anymore…but that’s pretty much SCIENTIFICALLY confirmed as good.
Anyways…more previews next time.
Coupon code – spring18 – is good for 25% off your entire order at the Arsenic Lullaby Online Store. The store loads slow AF, we’re working on it.
***this particular code DOES work with original art***