Moon Tarot (A Wayward Process Post!)

Alright. And now for something a little different. I have uploaded a video capture of my working on the above image:

You may download it directly (~50 megabytes) by clicking.
If the video doesn't play, it may be you're lacking the codec I used.
It is the Techsmith SC codec, which you may get from here.
It is tiny, just a simple exe installation and then run the video again, it'll work.

If that all sounds like too much hassle, you may instead watch the video on Vimeo, here.
But at the expense of definition, size and quality. Such is life.

It took about 2 hours to draw the image, it has been condensed at 10 minutes by being sped up. The music is the track First Narrows by Loscil, from the same-titled album. The program I'm using is Manga Studio EX 4.0 which I'm truly sorry Techsmith, I stole from you. If I ever become well-off I swear I'll buy it for real.

I like time-lapse videos of people drawing because it pleasantly removes the period the artist employs between thinking of a concept and actually rendering it on the paper. It also removes minor backtracking errors or undos (you can catch a big undo where I use the spraycan on the big rock and the remember "oh wait, it'll be a tattoo, you can't use this sort of grain!") so the end result is wonderfully automatic. In the future with our chemically augmentated reflexes and brain power, this will be how we will draw. We shall think it and behold, there it shall be.

So, about the piece. My friend Blazej Dzikowski has decided to get a second tattoo. I usually don't accept offers to do tattoo drawings. It is, as I'm certain readers who also draw will testify, something of a regular occurrence to be asked by people that barely know you to draw them something inane like a big Sepiroth from Final Fantasy rocking out on the electric guitar to get tattoed on their lower back. Shallow judgments aside (for all I know Sepiroth might mean a lot to them! Also, their lower back!) I am primarily not keen on the implied responsibility involved into making something another person will carry on their skin for a long time. However I do not have a lot of friends like Blazej so I asked about the details of the piece.

It's that Moon Tarot card. Here's some reference we dug up: 1, 2, 3. The prevalent themes are of course the naturalistic environment, the high tide water (along with the variable crustacean), the two towers (signifying distant judging civilization or perhaps bygone subservience?) and the dog and wolf, the one housebroken and trained, the other fundamentally wild, giving into their instinctual urges. When Blazej explained to me what the image means to him I told him I'd try to do a rendition, because most of all I felt I could understand the point of it (or to be exact I could understand his understanding of it and how it differed from my own complentary one). The one on top of the post is the initial version. His concerns over readability and relative sizes of the forms led me to alter the image in the following way:

As this would wrap around his arm. I think the distant dual towers also probably capture the underlying meaning of the card better than the fancier pillars of the first version. He seems happy with this image and I'm happy that he's happy, it's a fitting gift for him, just now a father. Responsibility coupled remembrance of internal desire, yes.

Best to you, Dominika and the child.

-Helm