#3 Combo Meal (Patreon)

This will make more sense if you've followed some of my Twitter depression tweets. -- I'm starting to feel better. Much better in fact. But for a while there I was thinking about adding more absurdity and horror to my artwork. Pushing the envelope a bit more, and Carlita has always been good for that. 

Of course I didn't know exactly what I was going to draw. I initially started by posing things out in 3D, had the program crash, and then refined my thinking on the second attempt. But at that point I had started to feel better, so I dialed back some on the squik and started practicing with fabric folds. Early on when sketching this, there were a lot more creases and wrinkles, but texture-wise it was too distracting, so I simplified things around the knees.

The eyes in the head were actually referenced through "Creepy Man" photos on duck duck go. It was honestly more disturbing that I had originally thought but they worked to create an incongruent set of faces behind the mask, which I echoed at the crotch, and with the feet.

I hate coloring, but Carlita is one of the few characters I have with an established color palate. And I actually was surprised how painting some tone in the eye holes changed he way the picture felt. And after that I had fun making skin tones, returning to my 50% value rule where I never make anything too dark

TL;DR So what started as vent art became a well needed practice piece that I'm glad I worked on.

I know its hard to translate what's going on in my head when I draw this stuff, but I guess this is me approaching abstract art. Where I stop thinking about the "subject" and start thinking about me emotions and the techniques used. A lot of apologetics for something this weird, but art can be like that sometimes!