Painting the layers for the NFT and playing with the Wallpaper design

Our lovely lady, who began life as a sketch like this:

Is getting her oil layers.

The butterfly on her forehead will be animated so thus far I've painted out three versions of it in layers in Corel Painter. I KNOW it must be easier using vectors in Adobe Aftereffects and I AM putting that on my 'Learning List" in the studo...but for now, I'm in on this one and rather enyoing the tedious layers.

For instance I had shared a sketch of a design I made from my sketchbook.

I have the luck of our beach and each morning (most mornings) I'm either in the sand, on a rock on the lawn's edge sketching things I see and find on our beach. Thus seaweed and shells play a pretty big part in these sketches. Then I take these inspirations and play with them in 'wallpaper' form.

I've always been obsessed with the Arts and Crafts movement in England and of course William Morris, so making designs in that feel has always appealed to me.

When I make a design like this I get to, unlike Morris sat in mid Victorian England, get to take it into photoshop and copy it and flip it horizontally and vertically and place it to get my patterns.

This was that images shared in last post, but of course you can see I left the 'style lines' or architecutre of the image IN there. This is simply a sample run but as I like to play with rough and rustic looks, I simply took my original image in Corel Painter and removed the pencil lines that laid out the pattern and went with it.

In this case you can see it feels more finished but has a very rustic feel, which I love. Were it to be a more finished wallpaper design I will go in and paint it out in acrylics and such in painter, which I believe I shall do for this finished NFT (again more layers).

I was, however, happy with the distressed look I was able to get with the various colourations and discolourations in the images from my simply having watercolured here and there on the original image, so I made the pattern ONTO things which I LOVE to do.

I have to say I LOVE it as wrapping paper and also on various things from bedding, phone cases, masks, pillows, curtains, journals and so on.

And with the magic of Photoshop I can also play with many colourways, like I really love how it looks in the reds and purples.

I think this would be striking in a small half bath/powder room or even as a lining in a dish or display cabinet. It would also look pretty interesting lining a bookshelf for that #darkacademia feel. I've not put this one on things yet, but will be doing so this week.

And here we are, still "In Process" of this first animated NFT. I think at it's completion I'll have learned better ways to approach them, but again for me one of my favourite bits of art and being an artist IS PROCESS. I really love taking things from sketching on the beach or stopping on my walks and using my pocket watercolours to capture a moment of moss ,stone, leaf and then letting it grow into figures and animals and scenery and final pieces.

I hope you enjoyed the continual process as well and I'm rather happy to be sharing it online again. Making blog posts is very like journaling and I journal and write many days , often in the borders of my sketches or on scraps of paper here and there, but there is something wonderful about journaling online. I hope my process and images aren't tedious and boring.

What is your favourite process when approaching a finished piece of whatever your passion may be?

I hope you all have a wonderful day and remember to stay creative.