New Painting: The Watchman!

Hi!

I'm VERY happy to be done with—and be able to share—my latest digital painting here.

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(See other Jephyr! digital paintings—as well as links to other artwork at jephyr.com)

"The Watchman" - Copyright 2017 - Jephyr! - All Rights Reserved

As I mentioned in other posts—I've rejoined the Concept Art Forum and started a new "sketchbook" there—and it inspired me to go through old an old "works in progress" file on my computer.

I came across a WIP that began as a character sketch I finished WAY back in 2011.  Then in 2012, I took that into my painting software and began working on it there.

I can see from looking through those old files that I would open and do a bit on it from time to time through the years—but always felt like I wasn't making any satisfactory progress...and would quickly move on to other things.

When I opened it recently—I struggled in the beginning a bit again—but then it was like the creative tap was unstopped.

Having been very influenced by surrealism—especially Salvador Dali's later paintings—starting in the 1950's when he returned to classicism—and after reading a number of books about him and his thought process about his work—I've found that it has given me a freedom to create from my subconscious—without worrying to much about the meaning about what I'm doing.

BUT—I can also say that this way of working also leads me to be surprised at my own sense of self-discovery at what comes out during this process.

In the case of this painting—the character as I drew him long ago—looked like an older Japanese man—and so I created an old looking World War II flag of Japan behind him.

At first I thought I was heading in the direction of turning him him into a Japanese soldier—or Kamikaze pilot—and so I made the flag look like it was painted on the side of a ship or plane and then added rivets to complete the look.

As I was close to finishing most of the character—it occurred to me to add some Japanese script to the painting.

But what?

Then the words "Faith, Hope and Love" from 1 Corinthians 13:13 came into my mind—and I found them in Kanji script on-line—and added them across the bottom of the image—creating the symbols using the pen tool.  I LOVED the way this looked.

That lead me to search Bible Gateway for that verse—and found a Japanese Living Bible translation for it.

The end of that verse in Japanese says simply (the English translation)—"The best of them is love," and those words in in the original Living Bible Translation fit PERFECTLY under the the script for "Faith, Hope and Love."

By this time my creative energies were FLOWING—and I decided to add a halo above the character—and then a banner behind the him.

I felt like I was nearing being done—but it was clear the banner looked a bit plain and needed "something."

I began searching for other Japanese words and phrases to put on it—and tried a number of different ones—and ultimately settled on the kanji words for "Watchman" to the left of the character—and the word "Peace" to the right—making the words look like they'd been embossed on a silk-ish ribbon.

In the end—it all felt so "right"—and what was began as a simple cartoony character—now had a deeper meaning to me.

I hope you enjoy this image as well!

Thanks for stopping by—and God Bless you!