Blood and Absinthe

This is my midterm portrait assignment for Color & Design at AAU. Every now and then an assignment comes up that is enough of a finished piece of art that I put it up here. For as... odd as this is, it qualifies.

AAU students who have taken Color & Design know the process, but for everyone else, it involves posterizing a photograph, adding a transparent design element, mixing 7-12 (I used nine) colors and painstakingly painting the $#^&*% out line of the thing one color at a time. All of my colors are mixed from primary red and secondary green with black and white.

Nice sharp edges are courtesy of frisket film, but I'd say 80% of the painting was done with a No. 2 sable brush. It measures about 7.5"x10".

After three days of intensive painting, my hands have almost stopped shaking.

What's with the blood and absinthe, you ask? The design (from a photo of the lovely Rachel Weisz) was inspired by a friend's WoW character. Who is a homicidal sociopath, more or less. Lovely! Who knew pink and green could be so... creepy?