Chaos Axe

Recently a client of mine, Ari Joshua, approached me to design a piece to represent him and his music. He gave me some loose guidelines and set me free to create. I microdosed over the course of 5 days to tap into the true authenticity of the piece but unfortunately I totally missed the mark and had to design a whole new artwork:)

Process

1As usual, I start extremely loose. This stage is just about getting the initial movement down and blocking in shapes.

2In Corel Painter, I lay in some pre-created, tesselating designs with my Pattern Pen. I am focusing on intuition and movement primarily. I want something dynamic and flowy. This will allow me the most freedom to incorporate the widest range of shapes and ideas and provide for plenty of happy accidents.

3More Pattern Pen overlays. Here I am working to weave multiple patterns together to create nice rhythm and balance of color.

4I continue to beef up the composition with some 3D shapes created in Zbrush and turned into tesselating patterns to be used with my Pattern Pens. This adds some real substance to the flow and provides a substrate for some enjoyable details later.

5Back in Photoshop, I add some contrast and bring out some of the vibrant colors you see in the final. At this point the undeniable serpent forms take on more of a concrete shape as a snake. I begin to refine our protagonist by increasing his contrast and painting together his loose forms.

6I’m really liking the egg form behind the main figure. This resembles something like a bulb or a seed and has a distinct Alien feeling. It serves as a fountain of textures and kind of governs the use of the textures in the rest of the piece. The snake is now turning into a solid representation of a Cosmic Serpent and brings tension into the mix. There must be some type of Divine Weapon here that can tame Apophis… Hmmm… what could it be?

7The piece is really taking shape at this point, though there are several wonky elements that will inspire the “final solution” :).

FinalAnd here we have the final. I created some impossible objects in the vein of M.C. Escher and they worked into the piece kindly. More 3D renders are incorporated and everything is painted together. The piece is unified in movement and color, the composition is dynamic and refined and all blends smoothly into the overall composition.