[picture Sources: X / X / X ]

[picture sources: x / x / x ]

"(Ivan Beck and) The Backrooms"

Digital collage made in GIMP with stock photos from pexels.com. Inspired by Kane Pixels' iteration of the backrooms (on youtube), the character of Ivan Beck, as well as the OST/music and its cover art for the series (also on youtube).

Some thoughts beneath the cut:

The mystery of who Ivan Beck is, what happened to him and his motivations are fun to dig into. There is a lot of symbolism in the Backrooms series and its supplemental material that I just really enjoy exploring visually; eyes, the sun and the sea for example. So making this while further trying out GIMP was a lot of fun.

I am particularly proud of how I turned the iris/pupil of the eye into a sun and made it look good.

As an aside, I find it is a good challenge to try and make art only using screenshots of a series or only stock images, hence why I have made some other art in this way as well that I will hopefully post soon.

Hi everyone!

So I recently rediscovered GIMP and making collage art when I was sick a few weeks ago. I hadn't touched it in years and didn't expect much to come of it, but I actually ended up making a couple things that I feel good enough about to share.

For now, I plan to purely use this as an art blog to post my stuff (and, if I am lucky, to get into conversations with other fans of the same media/people with similar interests). I have a small backlog of stuff to post, afterwards, we'll just see how this goes. This is very much a work in progress atm.

[sources: x / x / x / x / x ]

"Who's Lila? - Lila" aesthetic/moodboard

Aesthethic/Moodboard made with GIMP using stock images from pexels.com for the character "Lila" of the videogame "Who's Lila?" by Garage Heathen. Both the game and this piece of art use 'dithering' as an art style.

Thoughts beneath the cut:

First character-based aesthetic! I think this turned out pretty well, considering I haven't made that many aesthetics yet. I slightly adjusted the settings I used from the last one and added a layer to make the colors pop a bit more. Also I love the picture for the "shh"/whispering/mystery part of Lila - the shirt saying 'stop' is a nice touch.

I also find it is a neat challenge for myself to try and emulate a specific artstyle; it is a good way to try out the various effects and filters while having a clear goal in mind.

[sources : x / x ]

"Annihilation - The Bear (version 1)"

Digital collage made in GIMP. Inspired by the bear(-creature) from the movie adaptation of "Annihilation" by Jeff Vandermeer. Made with stock images from pexels.com.

This is less of a 1:1 interpretation of the bear, and more of an abstract, experimental, artistic representation of it. After I made the dolphin, I remembered the bear from the movie and thought about recreating it, and was actually quite surprised (in a good way) when I managed to do so.

The pic is meant to be half-realistic, half artistic; the skull kinda looks like it was drawn over the bear, and kinda as if the skull really portrudes from the bear's head. I really enjoyed the 'shared eye' as well, it came out looking really well.

I have a second picture of the bear that I will post in the future; it looks very similar but is not completely identical. Overall, this concept was a lot of fun to try and adapt, and I learned a few new things along the way.

(Fun fact, the bear actually has a name. It's 'Homerton'.) (2nd fun fact, I am almost sure that the art for Tom Rhodes' 'Don't Fear The Reaper' cover features the same skull I used.)

"The Hanged Man (Ending)"

[sources: x / x ]

Two variations of a digital collage made in GIMP with a picture from pexels.com and a tarot art motive from wikimedia commons (public domain), representing the Hanged Man ending from the videogame "Who's Lila?" by Garage Heathen. I used the dithering option in GIMP to get the ditherpunk effect.

Further thoughts below the cut:

This one really felt like being hit over the head with inspiration; I saw the picture of what is the background in this piece and was immediately like "Hanged Man Ending!" and then found the Hanged Man tarot art and they just - fit. So well.

It took a couple tries and iterations to get it exactly how I wanted it to be, but I am really happy about how this piece turned out.

Fun fact, I tried to use the 'Tomiho' color palette for the first version of the pic. As a treat for the fans of the game.

[sources: x / x / x / x / x / x ]

"Untitled Album/Song Cover Art #2"

Digital album/playlist cover made in GIMP with a stock image as well as various stock images converted into textures from pexels.com.

Most of the sources listed are pics from pexels.com that I turned into textures. They made creating this piece a lot of fun. This was mainly just me trying out stuff and then building onto the result of that experimentation, so this was a great piece to make purely for learning purposes.