“Tiger Den” by Antonis Papantoniou
Purpose
There is a fundamental difference I think, between fine art and applied art: Fine art is created to serve itself or an abstract ideal, where applied art is mostly created to serve a practical purpose. I think that this is a distinction that forms the foundation for visual arts such as concept art, character design, matte painting etc.
With that in mind, the first step I take into creating an image is to clarify its purpose.
That is easy to do when a client with specific needs commissions my work.
For this particular instance though, there was no client, so I had to define the purpose myself:
Recently I have been seduced by the potential that giclee art printing offers to artists. After a lot of research, I decided that it was worthwhile to create limited edition art prints of my digital images.
Through my research I’ve also found that there are specific groups of people that are interested in acquiring my artwork. One of those groups includes Kung fu fans and martial artists. This particular image is created with that group in mind.
Thumbnails
With my purpose in mind I begin to explore potential themes for my image. I create many thumbnails, using Photoshop and my intuos wacom tablet. I always work on a gray surface because A) a white surface makes my eyes red B) Working with both black and white on gray feels more complete than working just with black on a white surface.
Rough Sketch
I wanted to have a subject matter that was powerful but at the same time peaceful. I wanted to express the concept of “quiet strength” which is found at the core of many martial arts. I decided to place a tiger as the protagonist of the image, but in a meditative, quiet environment. Also, my love for character design urged me to humanize the tiger. So I ended up with an anthropomorphic Saolin tiger monk, in the middle of his tai chi form. I create my rough sketches using the same process as in my thumbnails, but at slightly higher resolution.
Reference
At this point I realized that I had no clue as to how a tiger REALLY looks like. So I checked out www.3d.sk and found a lot of neat photos to be used as reference. I also found reference concerning the anthropomorphic anatomy of the tiger.
Latest Comments