The Gas Mask (2018)

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Creation of Arts through Surrendering Controls to Nature.

I really enjoyed doing this piece. From the word 'mask' the first thing came to my mind was the gas mask and an opportunity for me to play around with the cloud brush tools in Procreate.

But through the process of this painting, it got me thinking into something deeper, a concept that explains the psychological phenomena of controls.

Look at the brush tab in the Procreate apps for instance. There are a tab called elements in which housed these brushes with some extra properties that is complex and designed to depicts a certain elements in nature for the artist to use in their paintings.

For me, this is one of those things that exist through the power of digital painting compared to traditional way of painting. The possibilities are endless, but a proper tool to be created always depends of what we meant to do, our intentions. A creation always in need of meanings, an idea can only be called 'an idea' when it becomes a solution to a problem.

If we take a closer look of what the brush is made of, we can find a range of different control sliders to customize the brush. These are all mathematical codings that controls the parameter of how the brush is behaving. Here, we have all the power to determine how the brush behave and works towards creating your artwork. In other words, you are in full control of your actions and full control on what will happen on the canvas.

However, the question that i always ask myself, do I really know what i really want to the very last detail?

To make an artwork, it is always about exploring possibilities to stylize an idea, rather than only making realistic finishes. The most common take by laymen who have no knowledge in arts will only think that a drawing should always be perfect, realistic and looks real. The more realistic a drawing, the more talented the artist, so they said.

But when it comes to digital painting, it challenges all these claims. This is because there are a lot of applications/software that can instantly change a photo into a 'drawing' in just one touch of a button. Does that considered as a drawing or an art? what does it meant by 'drawing' anyway if its perfectly realistic? So a drawing should or should not be perfect?

A full control will always be beneficial when you already really knows what you want. When all questions answered, when all possibilities explored, when all errors solved, then only it will work. But for an artwork, a drawing, or any work of arts, it needs exploration, it needs mistakes to be done in order to produce something creative, a solution to a problem. When you have full control, you even needs to know what problem you should choreographed and i believe it is out of our own capabilities to do so.

I also believe this is why people sketch before starting any work of arts, to rationalise, to explore and to find problems, in order to create an art piece. When you use the traditional method of drawing, tools like watercolour, oil painting, markers, charcoal, etc, these tools naturally possessed a certain unique behaviour when used for a painting, thus that suggest the styles and limitations for the artist to explore. Elements such gravity, wind, temperature, pigments will act as it meant to, where it give our minds some ample room to think about other things to work on, thus the results of all these will produce a well developed artworks worthy of an appreciation.

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So heres a video that incorporate some theatrical values of its process accompanied by certain suggestion of mood through the song and beats. Enjoy! :)

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