The Making Of "Rideshare"

“Whimsical artwork is like a breath of fresh air for the soul, a moment of magic that transports us to a world of wonder and imagination.” - Unknown

The Making of "Rideshare"

Many of you know me as a Fine Art Portrait Artist, but there is a creative side to me that thrives on working with subjects from nature. Animals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures, florals, and more.

One of my absolute favorite artistic outlets is to transform ordinary, and even dare I say, pretty terrible photos into something worthy of hanging on the wall.

Sometimes in this process, a story starts to emerge before I even start, with a seed of an idea sparked by something I see in my main subject. 

That's exactly what happened while I was contemplating the funny expression on the face of one of the giraffes resident at the Fort Worth Zoo. 

If I remember correctly, he (she?) was minding their own business just chewing on some leaves. But the position of the mouth and the asymmetrical position of the ears gave such a comical expression that deserved to be developed just a little more. The creative process started as a small idea that it would be funny if they had a stick in their mouth and a bird was riding around on it. And so it began.

In competition, storytelling and impact are two of the elements judges use to determine how well an entry does. My job here was to craft a story that would have impact, a clear center of interest, and maybe even a little bit of tension. Color harmony, technical excellence, and technique are also evaluated. All this is in my artist's mind as I build up the layers of my image.

Developing a concept is often an iterative process, and many times the concept expands, evolves, or even changes. I sometimes build off a previous idea, as was the case here. In 2020 I created several pieces for competition, and the first one evolved to have seven subjects telling the story. After that, I took on the challenge to see how many ways I could make images that contained seven subjects!

I wanted to have six "riders" to meet my seven subject challenge, and I thought it would be a bit of dangerous humor if the riders would not only be hitching their way with the giraffe, but that at any moment any one of them could have had someone else for lunch!

This panel shows all the individual elements I used (minus the sky) to tell the story of "Rideshare". Each element was extracted from the original photo and layered into the basic composite image. 

Once all the individual pieces are removed from their backgrounds and placed in the final composition, the finishing work can begin.

The lighting is balanced out across the image so that it's believable that these creatures were all in the same scene at the same time. The sky was brought in for the background, and finally the image was completely hand painted in photoshop using a digital tablet and an art pen, replicating the methods used by traditional artists.

If you love this whimsical piece of art, you can purchase your own customized ready to hang framed piece at my Fine Art Store.

Watch below as "Rideshare" comes to life in Photoshop!