Wanted to make a separate post to talk about some behind the scenes stuff for my “In the Pines” art cause its my space and I wanna yap about it 
I wanna say thank you again for the recent love on that. I genuinely am very proud of it. For the first time in a while, I went fully into challenging and committing myself to a big work again. It’s a very personal piece to me for tons of reasons. I’m so so happy y’all like it as much as I do 🥹
Ok, I love seeing how an artist’s brain works so here’s how mine did for this!:
This is where I did all of the rendering. It was originally on @/Karnelika’s jam but transferred it here
✏️- All my sketches are 100% messy, just getting the flow of a piece. 9/10 times it will look incomprehensible to everyone else but me. Do what your comfy with in putting ur brain to paper! Then when I get a good idea down, I refine it with references (Usually I research not only visual things but the historical context and stuff about a piece, which is why u see a different lamp in the final and different outfit choices for my guy)
- Colors and light is my fave thing in art, so for a big piece like this I want it to look right. I do more research to create a color and atmosphere moodboard (right) for a color thumbnail (tiny square at bottom). Doing a tiny thumbnail helps me focus on how it will look as one big artwork compared to focusing individually on small areas.
- Then we lineart, render and finish it yippeee! As I paint, I get more references to refine the sketch (usually seeing things irl helps! I took a pic of my own hand and stayed in the dark with eerie light XD)
- This is a weird one but MUSIC is my mandatory best friend in setting myself “in the artwork”. Never seen someone else do this 
I need to know the feel of a piece not only visually but through another sense, which is auditory! Listened to a ton of southern gothic, western horror and some dark country sounding folks.
🥸- One thing I struggled with in this was rendering the face realistically or going all in on my semi cartoony style, and decided the latter. Because it would look correct if I embrace my original base intention/sketch instead of fighting it. Then more brain turning things and that’s it! 🥳🥳
For now, gonna post the usual silly stuff I love. Big pieces like this might take a while but I do feel inspired to try it again. Enjoy your stay here! 
🏃♂️
@cloudy!! ☁︎·₊° thank you so much cloudy, you’ve been so awesome
@kookies_N_waffles aww you’re too sweet kookies, thank you truly 🥺 we should definitely collab again some time!