The Crow

Hoo boy this one.

I often don’t have much of an idea of what I’m actually painting. Very rare that I go into a portrait with a defined character in mind. Sometimes I sketch a few faces as a warm up, and build out from my favorite one. In this case, I decided that blue was a sick color and red was lame as hell. Many many years ago, when showing a colleague at Uni my art, she offhandedly commented that I use very warm colors for skin tones. First, I thought ‘Well duh, skin tones tend to be very warm. We’re bags of meat and blood and both of those are red’. Next I thought ‘Well what would it be like if it weren’t so warm?’ and that, I think is where I first started painting Demon characters with blue skin. (See half the cast of Soulmarket, and almost all the paintings I’ve done this year so far.) But even then, I still use warm colors, opting for warmth where you would expect it on a human’s face. Noses, cheeks, fingers, all tend to be very warm - or at least in my style they are - So I wanted to tempt fate with a more limited pallet.

I can’t explain the bird aesthetic other than just saying I’ve been inexplicably bird obsessed over the past couple weeks.

The reaction I got from friends over this piece however has been a surprise. Several of my friends have said this was their favorite recent design of mine, even asking for more illustrations of her. I don’t often build characters off of one off illustrations like this, but this may be a break in that. I’m on the Crow Lady train now.