The Pursuer, Final Artwork

Artwork Title : The Pursuer 

Art Movement :  Relational Art

Reference Artist : Brad Troemel

Theme : Social Media Issues

Artist statement  :

The original idea of this artwork is to portray keyboard warriors as a social media issue. Keyboard warriors are basically people who wage war on the Internet. I do believe that our society has become reckless at times when using social media due to the anonymity that we obtain from the Internet. Therefore, I was inspired to come out with this final artwork based on the idea of keyboard warriors.

I included 'Vendetta' as part of this artwork because of the symbolism of this character. To put it simply, I quote Alan Moore, writer for V for Vendetta - "Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof." 

Artwork by : Tang Ruxyn

Student ID : B1002820

I used this as the underdrawing for this design project.

First of all, I painted the shirt, hands and ipad. I created different layers when painting so that it will be easy for me to do any editing later on.

Then I painted the cup (reference below) and table and also Vendetta's face. I pay a lot of attention in adjusting the settings for the brush in order to get the correct tones for the colours in this part.

Next, I re-painted the shirt to get the results that I want. Then painted a chair and also the social media icons using some reference (listed at the end of this blogpost). I started to refine the details like adding a lightbulb behind Vendetta, choosing the correct colours for the icons and adding the 'smoke' effect by using brush and smudge tool.

Now is the probably one of the tricky parts in completing this design project. I had to constantly adjust the opacity for the layers I've created especially for the ipad in order to create a realistic effect to show that Vendetta is actually appearing as a reflection. Finally, I did the final touch-ups and it's done!

The Pursuer

References: 

Cup - http://img.ehowcdn.com/article-new/ehow/images/a02/3l/ct/do-cup-through-table-magic-800x800.jpg 

Facebook - http://jonbennallick.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Facebook-logo-ICON-02.png

Instagram - http://www.opensecrets.org/news/instagram-logo-icon.jpg

Twitter - http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/design/2012/6/new_twitter_logo.jpg

Please refer to the following posts to see in detail how I've come to finish this artwork :

Research on theme and issue (link)

First Sketch (link)

Second Sketch (link)

Crafting (Part 1) (link)

Crafting (Part 2) (link)