Updateee

So I painted. It's been a while since I did something original, and I'm really happy I started doing it again instead of just more fanart. Anyways, I've been studying Courbet, and have become fascinated with him, primarily his paintings that involve the subjects looking away from the viewer. Maybe I'm over analyzing, but I feel that when the main subject's face is looking away from the viewer, they sorta lose their individuality, and allow us to see through their eyes instead. I also feel this takes away the importance of the subject themselves, and instead places it on whatever they're looking at. In fact,

the entire picture's composition was designed with you looking at the grave. The heavy cast shadows point down towards the hole, and the things casting said shadows are just rocks. I used rocks because I didn't necessarily want anything interesting up towards the top, I just wanted to get straight to the point and have the viewer quickly realize there's nothing to look at there, and have their eyes pointed down towards the hole. The cactus was added for variety's sake, but it again is just decor, and an excuse for another cast shadow. There are small, slightly opaque lines on the ground that sort of all flow towards the hole. Lastly, the subject is looking at the hole. I wanted to give a sense of reaction, so last minute I added a puddle of splattered water (as opposed to just a puddle), to give the indication that he just dropped a bucket or something out of being startled. As for the hole itself, it's not exactly a complex subject, but I don't think it needed to be. I just wanted it to be bold and simple.

The subject matter of the picture itself was somewhat inspired by Junji Ito's story "The Enigma of Amigara Fault". It involves a group of people finding a bunch of holes in the face of a cliffside, in the shape of human bodies. More interesting is that each person has a hole exactly their size. One by one, the curiosity of the group gets each of them to travel through their holes. What's on the other side is for you to find out. The Story

I originally was going to do the holes like in the story, but it just seemed to campy and literal for what I wanted. I ended up going with the basic grave-esque hole. 

So yeah, that's how this one came about, I hope you like it!