PROCESS VIDEO // ice 01 (Patreon)

Here’s the process video for the ice painting I posted earlier this month! It’s been sped up 1.5 times, and the entire process took me a bit over 4.5 hours to do. I split it into three parts, so there’s two more videos coming up after this one!

Things to keep in mind while watching this video:

This video starts with the ideation process, which is just where I quickly lay down some lines and colors to get the idea down. It’s the process that is outlined in the Creative Spark tutorial. The ‘spark’ that inspired this image was ice skating in the winter of 2021, when it was so cold that the water froze over and people could skate on lakes and ponds. It was the first time I ever ice skated on natural ice, and what really struck me the most was the cracks in the ice. At first I thougth they were really scary, but apparently it’s totally normal. What’s fascinating is that the cracks show the depth and thickness of the ice really clearly! Ever since that winter, I have recurring dreams about skating on natural ice, and I wanted to make a painting that showed how magical this type of landscape can be.

I start out by trying to capture the cracks, expanding outwards from a kind of burst in the ice. After that I try to layer on colors to create more depth in the landscape. I basically add elements layer by layer until I like what I see! I feel like this method works best if you have a strong starting point, which in my case was the cracks and the way they define the composition of the image.

The colors of the painting suddenly change a bit around 39 minutes in. This is because I went back to the image in between other project and did some color tweaks using selective color, which I forgot to record. After this point, I start finalizing the painting a bit more, although not everything works well, so there’s some back-and-forth happening. I really wanted to keep the energy of the original rough version intact, so whenever I felt like I was doing anything that moved it away from that, I would go back a few steps and start over.

The next video is coming right up!