Hi lovelies! In this post, I’m showing you the ‘Making Of’ my digital artwork ‘Teatime’. It’s a piece of beautiful and bizarre art that tells a story. You’ll get to see screenshots of the major work in progress steps, and a timelapse video that shows you the digital editing process from start to finish. Enjoy!
A series of beautiful and bizarre art
‘Teatime’ is the first work of a series of beautiful and bizarre art. If you’ve looked at my Surreal Stories, you know that I love to create art that has a touch of ‘bizarre’.
‘Teatime’ is a work from 2021. The second piece of the series, ‘Pastime’, was created one year later in 2022.
Why do I say that ‘Teatime’ and ‘Pastime’ are beautiful & bizarre art? Because they both include elements that people generally consider ‘beautiful’, e.g. the lady herself, her clothing, and the interior. The obviously ‘bizarre’ element in both works is the turtle skeleton that serves as a canapé.
Other elements that you could call bizarre are the turtle serving tea in ‘Teatime’ and the hookah with the fish in ‘Pastime’.
Before we dive into the individual working steps of ‘Teatime’, you can check out the timelapse video below.
The Making Of 'Teatime'
Reverse layering
- Click to play
Work in Progress shots
For this creation, I chose a kind of baroque-like background with two large pillars. The roughly cut out and pasted in rectangle that you can see in the screenshot is just for covering some furniture that was in the original image.
Since I knew I was going to put my own ‘canapé’ over it, this rough overlay was completely enough.
Here I’ve put the ‘bizarre’ element in the picture: the turtle skeleton. The idea was that the skeleton serves as a canapé – a lavish piece of furniture where the lady is going to sit on.
I like to combine the ‘ugly’ and the ‘beautiful’. The subject of the work is going to be an attractive woman, while the skeleton is something that usually repels people.
If you are already familiar with my creative process, you know that I oftentimes create my ladies from many different individual pieces. I am always the face of my ladies, and this is true for ‘Teatime’, too. Here I also used my arms because I wanted them to be in a very specific position. One hand was supposed to hold the cigarette, while I wanted the other one to lie relaxed on the arm of the canapé – a skeleton bone.
I also wanted her to have long, flowing clothes. Something like a long, gorgeous gown and a robe over her shoulders. Creating the clothes was a little bit tricky because I created them from a single stock file, the one that you see right here.
I cut out individual parts from the dress, warped and distorted them in Photoshop to make them fit.
Winter Elegance by hellonlegs on DeviantArt. Thank you! 😍
I like to include elements of nature in my surreal creations and also in my Lip Service collection.
Here I put in some birds flying over the chandelier, a few butterflies, and last but not least another bizarre element: an alive turtle (as opposed to the turtle skeleton) serving a cup of tea. Like in many of my works, there are a few drops of blood in this piece. Blood is the elixir of life and thus a counter-part to the lifeless skeleton.
So why is there blood on the teacup? That’s going to remain a mystery, but the lady doesn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, she appears to be pretty comfortable within all the different elements of life and death, which I also consider a combination of beautiful and bizarre art.
In the last step, I added some smoke below the ceiling. After all, she’s having a cigarette with her tea.
When you take a close look, you see that the smoke contains jellyfish. Also notice the smoke heart close to her cigarette. Beyond everything, she is a kind-hearted woman, simply enjoying her teatime… right?
So much about the creation process of ‘Teatime‘. Feel free to check out the close-ups below and more of my Making Ofs, if you are interested!
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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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