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JonHodgson — Eel Witch
Published: 2010-11-10 14:32:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 21918; Favourites: 786; Downloads: 4244
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Description
(C)2010 Jon Hodgson - please ask before reproducing this image.A personal piece made in ArtRage, Photoshop and a bit of Illustrator.
"Making of" video:
Part One: [link]
Part Two: [link]
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Comments: 42
Thank you for letting us add your Amazing work to our gallery!
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No worries! Thank you for asking, I'm honoured!
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amazing, absolutely extraordinary! i really love this xD
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Fabulous piece of work, most deffo because of the light background!
Thank you so much for adding your work to Digital Delicacies! 
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Oooh lovely. Don't see eel witches every day around here. Dreamy colors and values with all those shiny little accents.
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i love this piece. i enjoyed the video for it too (i had to hunt it down and fav it because of that video 
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The way the lines draw the eye reminds me of antique Chinese ink paintings.
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Thanks for the video! I'm thinking of making a new video too, some day, and I'm also primarily interested in showing one of those times when things don't go very smoothly from A to B.
I think all experienced artists recognise the situation you face in this one. Perhaps painting would be rather boring if it wasn't for those detours and blind alleys that one enters now and then. I think I even have a tendency to enter them willingly at times. I have this feeling that things will not turn out very well, but seem reluctant to turn off the path. Perhaps it is the challenge, and wanting to somehow solve/save what seems to be a poor choice or very bad odds. You tend to learn things as well, as you linger in these situation.
Learning how to slay the darlings, is of course nevetheless vital for good and economic illustration.
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You know, I was thinking the other day about the reasons why I like art so much. And whilst I have a passion for trying to communicate ways of doing it, I soundly believe it can't be "taught" as such - merely learned.
I get a fair few emails asking questions which I believe are not really the right ones - the on-going joke is "which brushes do you use in Photoshop?" as if knowing that would make someone's work improve (fact is, it's the hard round on and the soft round one, which is wildly unsatisfying to those asking)
What I really like about making art is there's no right way which can be usefully communicated. "I did this" doesn't equate to "and so should you". That brings a lot of joy to my tiny world.
Actually I often feel the art business & careers are the same. People ask for answers which no one else can provide, and waste a lot of time trying to apply external answers to internal problems. You just can't do the same as someone else - things are so highly dependant on context.
I've had some very interesting discussions with a couple of artist friends (Ben Wootten and Dave Allsop to clangingly name-drop) separately and independently, and we all agree that livecasting fills us with dread, because so much of what we do is a series of errors that are learned from and moved on from with the knowledge we acquired by making the mistake. And that can be a tough thing to show live, given the weight of people's expectations.
In that way it's hard to say to people who want to pick your brains "make a big load of mistakes, do it all wrong, and learn something". But that's really it. For me at least I have to see things go wrong right at the sharp end to really understand. Much like we can intellectually absorb theory, but getting it from the brain to the hand can be interesting, if those things are considered separate. And many times you commit something to canvas and you learn far more than you ever did by trying to learn something like "greatest saturation at the mid tone".
It's all that "you have to go away to come back", "you can't cross the same river twice", "you don't carry the ferry boat on your back once you've crossed the river" zen goodness.
Heh I remember the first time I read a collection of koans, and was so soundly struck by how painting was filled with the same "stuff".
Hey can I copy your comment and my response into my blog? Some good stuff here I think.
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You're welcome to post it to the blog! That's a long reply, btw 
Regarding the koans: Since I have an interest in both art and spiritual matters I claim that indulging in painting is a most efficient path to spiritual understanding and development.
Studying yourself and/through the simplified minitiature world/mirror before you is almost impossible without some sort of learning. And it is usually very meditative (silent, uneventful etc)
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Very interesting conversation 
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Cool creature design - like a fresh take on the mermaid.
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this is awesome dude!! really nice design and palette
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beautiful! I love the motion in this. there is so much energy in the arc of her hips
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I like how you use colour. They are grayish yet so colourful. It's not so high-contrasty but the subject stands out.
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I really like this one - has some Jon Foster-y bits to the composition that are working well.
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