Empathy - Value Phase (Patreon)

For the past several years I've been restricting myself to working on one part of the series at a time, switching between Emanations, Watchers and Seraphim in long runs. Over time that has felt a little restrictive but I've been sticking with it until now.

Originally I had planned on creating a new incarnation of Shelegiel, Angel of Snow since it was both thematic for December and the last Seraphim that only has a single illustration to date. After a couple failed attempts at starting it and a hard deadline looming, I decided instead to pick up an older sketch of Hesed and work with him instead.

The sketch for this piece was done the first time I visited Sarasota last year when I was invited to speak at Ringling College of Art and Design. Spending time around such amazing art students inspired me to work on a more ambitious sketch than usual. However, despite being especially proud of the sketch I didn't have a plan for returning to the Emanations as part of a larger series of work.

Pulling this sketch into Photoshop was a breath of fresh air. Giving myself permission to work uninhibited for the first time in a while brought back that special energy I get from my favorite pieces of art. As soon as I started working on the values for this piece, I knew it would end up being special to me.