How to unlock a phone
A silly idea I’d had for a while, made manifest over the Easter weekend.
This particular picture holds the dubious honour of being suspected to be “AI art that somehow knew how to make hands.” Or “probably traced off a real image.”
I confess – as a possessor of two hands, I did dare to glance at them a few times throughout.
This picture began all the way back in April 2023. I painted the rock fairly quickly and sketched some bits of station stuff, but it didn’t look all that great and was forgotten not long after. Fast forward to the very end of that year when it was spontaneously unforgotten, and I reworked the sketch into something decent. Then kept on sketching and outlining until, in the end, the actual process of painting the complex amounted to duplicating those hours of effort by doing little more than colouring in the fairly rough lines. Oops.
All in all, 283 days …
Not the best result. It’s alright, I suppose, but not really what I was aiming for, whatever that might have been.
That metal truss thing around the fuel/chemical storage tanks definitely took up a big chunk of time.
Lots of words in here that aren’t exactly legible. Fortunately, by way of exclusive access to the original, full-resolution and layered image, I can offer this insight for third-party remaster:
WARNING TO BE USED ONLY AS DIRECTED!
- RISK OF ELECTRIC SHOCK
Serviceable only by authorised personnel
- CRUSHING HAZARD
Ensure unit is switched off and obstructions are clear
140 kW MOBILE GENERATOR UNIT ref no. KA217-OR
Provided under warranty by PRO-GEN® Electric Generators and Inverters Pty. Ltd. Warranty void if operated contrary to provided directions and safety procedures Do not operate in an enclosed space. Ensure adequate ventillation at all …
This was an attempt to do the thing where you draw the whole thing in greyscale and then slap colour on at the end. It was supposed to make it easier to focus on shadows and texture and all that. But after investing however much effort, I found right at the end that Krita’s idea of how the ‘colour’ blending mode should operate was at extreme odds with common sense. I managed to rescue it in the end, but the ultimate result is that there’s no variation in colour beyond shade.
That’s what experimentation is for but …