Cavern
23.75" x 41.75"
Spray paints, white paint pen, black micron pen
The theme for this piece was cave or cavern. Initially I was thinking about illustrating the inside of a mine shaft, but after researching for inspiration I decided to go with one of my favorite art styles: retro-futurism. The main traits of this style revolve around a sort of 50's sci-fi view of the world of tomorrow, and I imagined looking through a cavern entrance out onto the surface where a civilization is being built up.
This work includes inspiration from my earliest attempts at using spray paint as a medium, in which I created views of space and planets with techniques learned online. I had worked on and off with spray paint since those experimentations, but never seriously. When I began work on these assignments, my first thought was to use spray paint due to the size of the pieces, so using these techniques made this piece complete in the way that I wanted. Taping off sections to create the sense of layered distances was a large part of the process, as well as drawing the icicles in with the white paint pen.
Step 1
Originally, I wanted to illustrate a mine shaft with inspiration drawn from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The scene where they exit mine while in the car flying on and off of the tracks had extremely interesting colors and shapes throughout the entire shot, and this struck me as something that could make an interesting composition. As I was working through this idea, I found an image saved on my computer that had explorers from the 1920's looking out of a large ice cave at their ship in the distance. I decided to change the composition to be looking out of a similarly shaped cave. I did thumbnails in pen, spray paint, and ink, which led me to decide between spray paint and ink.
Step 2
Once I chose to use the cave as a frame, I had a few ideas for the landscape beyond. My first thoughts included a space landscape and a planet. This evolved into an idea behind the piece: a retro-futuristic landscape that shows the build up of a civilization. Bio-domes from 50's sci-fi ad's and illustrations from science magazines from the time are the main source of inspiration for this piece. The optimistic view of the travel of tomorrow interested me, and the idea behind colonization is one of my favorite topics. I have been a long time follower of Elon Musk and SpaceX, and the landings of the Falcon 9 Stage One booster in December 2015, and these happenings greatly impacted this idea.
