My Art Book

Dilumi - "Cold" cover

Drawn 11-11-15

I am really proud of this one. It's the cover for my electro song Cold. It started out as a concept and branched into a full set of lyrics (which I am also proud of). Then I started thinking of different ways I could do art for it, and I came up with this. I was thinking a lot about the stain of blood on snow and the contrast of red against white, and I was trying to figure out something I could draw myself that was similar to that. This is what I came up with, an ice block in the shape of a heart, with blood pouring from a crack in it. I love this concept because it ties into the lyrics very well and it was fun to draw. I love the purity and symmetry of the picture that is, in a way, pierced by the shadow and the blood. I had drawn the shadow on a lot darker, but I wanted it lighter and more accented at the bottom tip of the heart, so I ran an eraser with partial opacity over it. It ended up perfect. The heart itself took several layers to complete. I started by drawing the outline of the heart in light grey and then filling the body with a few shades of blue. I blurred the whole thing and then started layering more on top of it. I drew a very thin, near-black outline all the way around the heart, blurred it and redid it several times, then ended up covering most of it with the various shades around the edges. But you can still see remnants of it, and every layer is still vital. I wanted some edges darker and some lighter, and I'm glad I ended up going with that for the final result. I used a normal brush on blurred setting to create a softer tone for most of the ice, and I also used a brush that creates streaked lines of one color while blending colors together to bring the shades into each other. Then I just decided to "trash" it in a way by drawing all kinds of sharp lines on it without any idea what I was doing. For some art, that is a very good way to approach it instead of overthinking the technique, and I'm glad I did it on this one because it makes the ice look glazed over and cracked on the very surface. I also drew some lines jutting out from the bottom, and this is where the idea for the icicles originated. I saved a version of the drawing with just the ice cube, then I ran a light red brush over the white parts of the ice to stain them in a barely noticeable fashion. I drew the blood trickling down the ice next, and then the splotch in front of the heart last, alternating between sharpening and blurring and cutting off edges and adding more color and taking it off until I had what I wanted. And in the end I realized it had come out perfectly, even if it wasn't what I was expecting. This one was made on ArtStudio and took probably somewhere around 45 minutes. I hope you guys love the end result of it as much as I do.