‘BLACK NIGHT’ is my first NFT Art Collection that is exclusively available on OpenSea. The collection includes four pieces of dark and sparkling lip art. All NFT artworks are unique assets, each piece only available once. But that’s not all. All items are hand-signed and numbered, to provide extra value. In this post, I give you insights into my creative process and show you the before and after pics. It’s all real art created with love—no quickly rigged up AI generation. See for yourself!
I know I’m kinda late to the party, but BLACK NIGHT is my first NFT Art Collection, exclusively available on OpenSea. If you’ve been in the game for a while, you probably already know what NFT Art is.
For those who are not yet familiar with the term, let me quickly break it down for you: NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token and refers to a unique item on the blockchain. You can purchase it with cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin.
Bitcoins are actually fungible tokens. That means you can replace one bitcoin with another, and you still have the same value. An NFT artwork, however, cannot be changed or edited, once it has been minted on the blockchain.
Related: How To Mint An NFT For Free On OpenSea (*Step-By-Step Tutorial*)
In other words, an artist can publish limited editions of their art as NFTs, which makes each piece a unique digital asset that cannot be copied or duplicated. When someone buys your NFT artwork, they own a unique piece of art that can be extremely valuable.
So far, so good.
What makes the BLACK NIGHT NFT Art Collection special?
For a long time, I shied away from making my art available as NFTs. It seemed to be too simple. You just upload a digital copy of your artwork to a crypto marketplace and sell it for money, while anyone could download the same image from any other platform where you publish it?
That feels too ordinary to me.
If I am to sell digital files of my art, I want to offer my prospect buyers something special. Something that they don't get anywhere else.
That’s why I decided to offer hand-signed and numbered NFTs of my artwork. Each NFT is available only once (you could also sell several copies of your NFT art) and on one marketplace only. In this case OpenSea.
At first, it might sound weird to hand-sign and number a digital item, right? Especially when you look at all the AI-generated pieces that people usually offer on crypto marketplaces. They enter a couple of prompts into an AI image generator, throw on a number of filters—and BAM!—they sell their NFT for several hundreds of dollars (and people are buying it).
Related: AI Art & Human Art: Can AI Art Be Considered Real Art?
Well, to each their own. But that’s not what I want to do. So, yes, my NFTs are hand-signed and numbered, and you can be sure to get something special when you purchase crypto art of mine! Plus, to let people know that it’s not AI art but real human art created with love ♥, I also show the original shots along with the final pieces.
But now, let’s delve into the actual BLACK NIGHT lip art collection!
What's the creative process behind the BLACK NIGHT NFT Art Collection?
The BLACK NIGHT Collection consists of four pieces:
Of course, you can also purchase regular prints of those artworks in my web store.
One thing that all pieces in the series have in common is the black lips, the glitter and sparkles. Yes, it was a huge mess with all the eyeshadow and the glitter—but it was so much fun! I really enjoyed the photo shoots for these works.
Just in case you are wondering:
It's all done by yours truly. I'm the model, the make-up artist, the photographer, and the editor!
ST∆RRY NIGHT
Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.
~ Vincent van Gogh
ST∆RRY NIGHT is the first piece in the series. I created it in April 2023. I have no idea what inspired me to create this artwork, I think it’s just that I like lip art and that I wanted to experiment a bit with make-up and glitter.
Below you can view the final piece, but it didn’t start out like that…
ST∆RRY NIGHT—the first experiment with black eyeshadow and golden glitter in the series.
The Before & After pic below gives you an idea of what the original photo looked like and what I made out of it in Photoshop. As I already mentioned in 20 Facts about The Artist, I’m more passionate of an editor than a photographer. ´\_(ツ)_/`
For me, editing is where the real fun starts. It’s kind of hard to find all the accessories and jewelry that I sometimes imagine to create. For this piece, I simply took an old, scratched spangle that I had at home—you just kind of need to get the form right. And then, I transformed it into a shining diamond in Photoshop!
Of course, I also edited the lips and colors. Be sure—there is no glamor photo that you see online that came out of the camera as it is. There’s always a lot of editing involved.
If you want to learn how to retouch photos, you can take part in the poll to get a Photoshop tutorial on how I created ST∆RRY NIGHT. Just leave your vote as long as votes are open, and maybe my next Photoshop retouching tutorial will be about the creative process of this piece!
On the left: This is what ST∆RRY NIGHT looked like at the beginning. On the right: This is what I made out of it in Photoshop. (Learn how to make a Before and After picture in Photoshop here.)
The small video just goes to show what ST∆RRY NIGHT looked like originally and what I made out of it. You can clearly tell the amount of work that went into this piece…
…real human art created with love ♥
The Before & After Video of ST∆RRY NIGHT just goes to show how much work and ♥ went into this piece of art.
BL∆CK DI∆MOND
I am a black diamond, unfaceted. Black diamonds are rare, hard to cut, and therefore uncommercial.
~ Karl Lagerfeld
The second piece in the series is BL∆CK DI∆MOND (created in July 2023). ST∆RRY NIGHT had been so much fun, so there needed to a follow-up piece (at least one).
BL∆CK DI∆MOND is made in the same vain: a ton of dark eyeshadow, lots of golden glitter, and…
BL∆CK DI∆MOND—if it was fun, why not do it again?
…do you have a black diamond at home? Well, I don’t. So I made do with a black pearl that I later on transformed into a shining diamond in Photoshop.
A few selective color adjustments, some more sparkles here and there, a bit of golden dust on the right-hand side—and voilà, shine bright like a diamond…
BL∆CK DI∆MOND before and after: lots of enhancements made in Photoshop.
In the video below, you can see in full view what BL∆CK DI∆MOND looked like before and what it looks like after:
BL∆CK DI∆MOND (Before & After): no rigged-up AI-generated stuff.
PINK NIGHTF∆LL
Shine bright like a diamond. Shine bright, tonight, you and I. We're beautiful, like diamonds on the sky.
~ Rihanna
I do not only have golden glitter, I also have pink glitter! And it would be a real pity to leave the pink glitter unused… So here comes PINK NIGHTF∆LL!
PINK NIGHTF∆LL followed right after the first two pieces in the series, in August 2023.
PINK NIGHTF∆LL—the third but definitely not the last piece in the series.
Black and pink is one of my favorite color combinations. And as the glitter was already pink, it also had to be a sparkling pink diamond…
PINK NIGHTF∆LL before and after: I replaced the black pearl with a pink sparkling diamond in Photoshop, besides some color enhancements, scaling and a few other tweaks.
Real art created with love: have a look at the full before & after shots below. By purchasing this NFT, you will receive a unique token, hand-signed and numbered, available on the blockchain only once.
PINK NIGHTF∆LL (Before & After): a unique token, hand-signed and numbered, available on the blockchain only once.
D∆RK HE∆RT
Without the heart, there can be no understanding between the hand and the mind.
~ Madonna
D∆RK HE∆RT is the last work in the series that I created in August 2023, too. Everything in this series is about glitter and sparkles. So, for the last piece, I chose pink glitter and a heart theme.
D∆RK HE∆RT—with pink glitter and hearts, this is the last piece in the series, so far.
As you might have guessed, D∆RK HE∆RT doesn’t look the same before and after. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a pink, sparkling heart-shaped gem at home, so I simply made do with a heart cut out of cardboard. It works. All you need is to get the form right—and the rest can be done in Photoshop!
Apart from creating the heart in Photoshop, I also added some heart glitter this time and a pink droplet. Why? Because I think the droplet just underlines nicely the flow of the piece!
D∆RK HE∆RT before and after: because I didn’t have a pink, sparkling stone in form of a heart, I made do with a cardboard heart.
… and here we go. ♥ art created with love—hand-signed and hand-numbered available as NFT in the BLACK NIGHT Collection on OpenSea! Check it out.
D∆RK HE∆RT (Before & After): here you can see again the before and after, including the hand-signed and numbered NFT.
Also available as Fine Art Prints:
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- Art Prints & HR Images, Lip Service
ST∆RRY NIGHT
- $21.00 – $420.00
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Select options
- Art Prints & HR Images, Lip Service
BL∆CK DI∆MOND
- $21.00 – $420.00
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Select options
- Art Prints & HR Images, Lip Service
PINK NIGHTF∆LL
- $21.00 – $420.00
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Select options
- Art Prints & HR Images, Lip Service
D∆RK HE∆RT
- $21.00 – $420.00
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I hope that this post helped you gain some insights into my creative process and better understand what I meant to express through this work. However, I know that art is subjective and I am always interested in knowing how my viewers perceive my art.
What do you think about this piece? How does it make you feel? What does it mean to you? Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments. If this piece inspired you to create a new piece of your own, I would love to see it! Post a link in the comments, tag me on Instagram (@ginangiela), or reach out to me directly. Make sure to sign up for my email list below so you don’t miss out on new ‘Making Ofs’ and other cool stuff. ♥
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Hi Kibbee, so glad you find this site helpful! Looking forward to staying in touch (: