I love the world of the insect, and I derive the fairy world from that same love. These images originated from my memory of childhood, my childhood spent in the mountain areas of China, where I have fond memories with these fairies. So, a lot of my paintings are about them.
In my mind, the fairy world has a perfectly formed, intact civilization. They have their own social structure, and a complete form, appearance and expression. The concept of "Lost in the wind" has been with me for a long time. The story is about a little princess who goes to the garden expecting to reap from the bud break, some blossom and fruit. But, this is not to be. Lost in the rain of the night, it is suspected that a bird took flight with the fruit, but the truth lies in a human trampling. So, we are left with the fearsome face of the servant, a flurried bodyguard, and the despondent princess, interwoven together. Of course, you may have other ideas, but the disappointed group is what I wanted to depict.
I got used to drafting in Photoshop directly. I revised a rough draft several times and that’s the beauty in Photoshop. Originally, I wanted to express one really small world but that feeling pushes grass aside. The general idea remained the same but I revised almost every other element. It now seemed that the sketch was more interesting.
The hierarchy in the initial sketch was not too clear. Who was the most important in the scene? Then, I moved the leading ‘actor’ to the front. Like stage-managing the lead player into the spotlight, this had the same effect. The audience's attention had to be well ordered, well arranged.
The resolution of this picture was 4,488 x 5,670px, at 300dpi. Considering the speed of my computer, I moved several parts out by themselves, to paint further, after confirming the overall sketch. To me, the most interesting image is the beetle. I wanted to express the strong contrast between he and the princess. The princess' hair is in the same style as my wife’s when she was 18 years old, called a ‘Scorpion plait’ in China. I reckon it is pretty clear that the beetle is actually me.
After finishing the background as well as all the other parts, I began to piece them together just like a picture arrangement game. Arranging their position properly, adjusting their color according to the background, also involved adjusting the reflecting light in the edge, and the transparency of their wings. I covered the bottom in some cool color when I noticed that the background did not have good depth of field.
I am Chinabear, and my Chinese name is Hong Jie Cao. I was born in 1971, and I graduated from ShanDong Teacher’s University, with a Arts degree majoring in oil painting. I’m a teacher in the middle school now, engaged in multimedia and I really enjoy 2D. All of my computer graphics I have done as a hobby, apart from some illustrations that publishers ask me to do once in a while. Now, I am preparing a series about childhood and the fairy world, named ‘Wind of mountain’. All the images for that are on my web site below, but all the text is in Chinese. Enjoy. SD-Design CGBBS My threads on CGTalk
