Hi guys! So as part of my Novemeber post mix up, I wanted to show you guys more of the “behind the screen” info about how I create artwork.

For yesterday’s Horror Haikuesday piece I had Patrick Rahall’s poem as my starting point.

When I read it I had a few images immediatley stick out in my head.

Scientist, experiment gone wrong, and then flashes of thoughts bringing me to “The Fly,” and a particular scene in Frank Peretti’s “Monster.”

So next I scrolled around deviantart.com for inspiration. Here are the main ones I ended up drawing elements from:

Mad Scientist by thegryph

Storm-Ape and Mad Doktor by Monkey-Paw

Mad scientist by sinhalite

Next, I tackled the drawing/painting by hand:

After that I took a photo of the painting and started messing with it in photoshop. Here’s the various stages of that:

My sad sad laptop was having some issues with communicating with my tablet on the night I made this, so I skipped the steps where I normally clean up my line work and details. I figured messy and cartoony kind of worked for the mood I was looking for anyway.

Here are the stages I took to get the painting to look a little more vibrant and polished.

1. raw image – cool… but a little lack-luster
2. brightness and contrast adjustment layer – pump up the blacks and whites a bit
3. duplicate original image and change layer mode to multiply not enough detail yet
4. Big ol’ blob o’ blue using the gradient tool – needs color
5. change the blob of blue blending mode to color burn – ooo… lighting effects
6. big blob of green- more color!!
7. change the green layer blending mode to linear burn – ahhh, glowy. me like.
8. big blob of black – I want the light to be more focused on the subject
9. lower the black layer’s opacity to 90%- oh! look! the depth is back!
10. duplicate original layer and put on top of the stack. Use the paint bucket tool to highlight various chunks of it – looks stupid now, but it’ll be better with the all-mighty blending mode change
11. change awful looking teal layer blending mode to overlay – now there’s a cool looking edge highlight.
12. I touched up the black lines around the glasses, just a bit.
13. Watermark!

Tada!! So, there you have it. How “Experiment” was made.