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Description
The Viewing
This is how I feel about viewings.

Created in painter at twice this size.

Web browsers lose some of the smaller details in the pic because jpegs are darker in them for some reason.

I'll describe how I made it from the bottom up. I used the digital airbrush for the floor and overlaid a texture (ala filters) that I skewed to the angle I wanted the floor to be. For the characters and the jar, I used the digital airbrush and the just add water brush. To create the sky, I created an entirely new image by combining 5 photos taken by the Hubbell telescope and blending them together. I used a variety of cloner brushes to paint the image onto my canvas and really get things mixed up. I wanted the butterfly shape to show in the clouds of the background. Then I mirrored half the background and flipped so it would look like and extension of the butterfly (which I wanted to make symmetrical). Then I used the just add water brush to blend the sky into the lower black background. To create the butterfly, I used the blocker brush and digital air brush. I looked at 4 or 5 photos of butterflies as a reference. I liked the shape of the wings on one, the colors on another, the pattern on another, the body of another, etc. After I drew one wing, I mirrored just it to make the other, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I wanted it to be exact, (like I did with the background).

I usually refuse to tell people what's going on in my images, but I guess I will this time because so many people have asked me what it's all about.
The picture is supposed to be a viewing. Sometimes when people die, family and friends all go to get one last look at the body. I feel it's in bad taste. What you are looking at is a dried up corpse, not the person that you knew and loved. A few years ago I went to my grandfather's viewing. The last time I saw him before that, he had a big smile on his face and he was laughing. What I saw at that viewing was not my Grandfather and was not the last memory of him I would like to remember. All I saw was an old container that held his spirit. I like to think that after this life, in one way or another, your spirit moves on to a new adventure. To me death is like setting a butterfly free that was trapped in a jar.* The viewing is like staring at the empty jar a crying about it. In a way I a mocking the mourners with this image. Hopefully in a tasteful way.

*note: a very comfortable jar that I don't want to leave for at least 175 more years. (Didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea there)

Description
The Viewing
This is how I feel about viewings.

Created in painter at twice this size.

Web browsers lose some of the smaller details in the pic because jpegs are darker in them for some reason.

I'll describe how I made it from the bottom up. I used the digital airbrush for the floor and overlaid a texture (ala filters) that I skewed to the angle I wanted the floor to be. For the characters and the jar, I used the digital airbrush and the just add water brush. To create the sky, I created an entirely new image by combining 5 photos taken by the Hubbell telescope and blending them together. I used a variety of cloner brushes to paint the image onto my canvas and really get things mixed up. I wanted the butterfly shape to show in the clouds of the background. Then I mirrored half the background and flipped so it would look like and extension of the butterfly (which I wanted to make symmetrical). Then I used the just add water brush to blend the sky into the lower black background. To create the butterfly, I used the blocker brush and digital air brush. I looked at 4 or 5 photos of butterflies as a reference. I liked the shape of the wings on one, the colors on another, the pattern on another, the body of another, etc. After I drew one wing, I mirrored just it to make the other, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I wanted it to be exact, (like I did with the background).

I usually refuse to tell people what's going on in my images, but I guess I will this time because so many people have asked me what it's all about.
The picture is supposed to be a viewing. Sometimes when people die, family and friends all go to get one last look at the body. I feel it's in bad taste. What you are looking at is a dried up corpse, not the person that you knew and loved. A few years ago I went to my grandfather's viewing. The last time I saw him before that, he had a big smile on his face and he was laughing. What I saw at that viewing was not my Grandfather and was not the last memory of him I would like to remember. All I saw was an old container that held his spirit. I like to think that after this life, in one way or another, your spirit moves on to a new adventure. To me death is like setting a butterfly free that was trapped in a jar.* The viewing is like staring at the empty jar a crying about it. In a way I a mocking the mourners with this image. Hopefully in a tasteful way.

*note: a very comfortable jar that I don't want to leave for at least 175 more years. (Didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea there)