‘Cat & Mouse’ is a piece of conceptual digital art that I created in 2014, and it’s one of the rare face shots – so far – in my Surreal Stories Collection.
The first thing that catches your eye is probably the pink ‘Mickey Mouse’ helmet. This helmet is one of the main ideas in the creation, and it was particularly fun to create!
Another piece of mine where I’ve worked with a similar helmet (and a similar tonal range) is ‘I survive (Fingers crossed)’ from 2017.
The Making Of 'Cat & Mouse'
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Work in Progress shots
This is how ‘Cat & Mouse’ started: with a simple face shot of myself by the window in my room. As usual, the photographs that I use for my surreal creations are pretty basic – no special setting, no special lighting, no special preparation in general.
I don’t like taking photos that much. But I love the digital editing process, and usually you can even fix the worst shots in Photoshop with a couple of blending modes!
The face is already a bit edited here: I made the eyes a bit larger, liquified the chin and nose, and changed the form of my head a bit (which you can also see by the shelves in the background 😂).
Here we go: blending modes and adjustment layers did their job. Following the basic steps of making a high-key photo in Photoshop, I brightened the skins tones quite a bit, threw in a bit of digital lipstick, and liquified the eyebrows more to create some nice curve.
The main things that happened here is that I cut out the background and replaced it with a color gradient. Plus, my ‘Cat & Mouse’ lady got her curly hair and white shirt.
In the next step, I created the transparent, pink ‘Mickey Mouse’ helmet. Such transparent things are actually super-easy to create in Photoshop.
You just need a black area that you make look transparent and colored with different blending mode adjustment layers and by changing the opacity. Let me know if you’d like to see a tutorial about that!
The lady got some visitors – two little white mice climbing around on the ‘mouse helmet’.
Also take a good look at her mouth… That’s the reason why the finger was there in the first place. Of course, the mice and the finger are also important parts of this piece of digital concept art and I’m going to talk more about that a little later down below.
‘Cat & Mouse‘ is complete. The last modifications are rather minor, but they still have quite an impact on the overall composition.
Some blood on the chest, a couple of reflections on the body and in the face, a bit of eye make-up and blush on the cheeks. And… don’t forget to spot the whiskers! 😼
What's the meaning behind this piece of conceptual digital art?
The concept behind ‘Cat & Mouse’ is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
With a good portion of sarcasm and humor, ‘Cat & Mouse’ symbolizes the evil that comes in disguise to get what it wants.
Despite looking beautiful and innocent, the lady comes with vicious intentions. Disguised with a ‘mouse’ helmet, she pretends to be a mouse herself and tries to attract exactly those little creatures she’s planning to eat.
Her disguise it’s not perfect, though: her whiskers are giving out her real nature. Nevertheless, it’s working…
The mice are not cautious enough and play light-heartedly on her helmet. One mouse already fell victim to the trap. With an innocuous expression, she devours her prey and all that remains is the tail still sticking out of her mouth…
And the moral of this story… No, no, no. Let’s not take it that seriously. (ಠ‿↼) Just a piece of conceptual digital art of mine where I’m visualizing a picture that came into my mind… ‘Cat & Mouse’ was fun to create and I enjoyed the WiP process a lot. I hope you also enjoyed reading about it and like the final piece!
Feel free to check out the close-ups below and some more of my ‘Making Ofs’, if you like!
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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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Cat & Mouse
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