Thursday 21 April 2011

The Enchanted Forest...

'The enchanted forest' is a forthcoming show at the Strychnin Gallery in Berlin that i was asked to participate in. Heres the press release:

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Every single minute forest regions with the size of 36 football fields disappear from our planet. Such a massive removal of trees without sufficient reforestation results in biodiversity loss, habitat damage and aridity. Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland. Nowadays, deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of the global greenhouse gas emission which drastically affects global warming and climate change.

In concordance with the United Nation's International Year of Forests, Strychnin Gallery presents 'The Enchanted Forest' an international charity group show curated by Yasha Young and Giovanni Cervi that is dedicated to the forests and their inhabitants all over the world. The show should remind people of the drastic damage that is constantly done to our forests as well as their beauty, uniqueness and importance. Many lovingly and elaborately crafted sculptures as well as paintings and photographs by over 30 international artists will display both the desolation of deforestation and the forest‘s magic and liveliness that we have to save.

The long list of participating artists includes: David Hochbaum, Luke Chueh, Mia Araujo, Caitlin Hackett, Travis Lampe, Tom Bagshaw, Bethany Marchman, Mimi S., Seymour, Lindsey Carr, Skeleton Heart, Daniel van Nes, Christina Graf, Miraschi, Raf Veulemans, Lisa Black, Lisa Mei Ling Fong, Annie Bertram, Francois Escalmel, Wee Flowers, Squp, Tamara Ferioli, Fernanda Veron, Lost Fish, Angela Singer, Elmer Presslee, Lucy McLauchlan, Auriea Harvey & Michael Samyn (Tale of Tales), Sage Vaughn, Suzanne Moxhay, Yumiko Kayumawa and many more.

10 percent of the price of every sold artwork will be donated to a project of the WWF!

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Of course i was more than happy to be involved and had a pretty strong idea of what i wanted to do almost immediately. Heres the final artwork and a little walk-through on the process behind it.



Quite unusually for me, i started out with a pencil sketch, yes- real paper and pencil! I didnt need a brilliant reproduction of the sketch as i was just going to be painting over the top so i just took a quick snap with my phone...



The next 3 shots are the quick greyscale forest painted in Photoshop over the top of the sketch, next up is a rough placement for the characters in the scene. Once i had these elements established i put a solid layer over everything and lowered the opacity slightly, then started sketching in the characters in more detail with a default round brush...





Once i had the sketch completed and given the characters some basic tonal work i did a few rough color tests then took a flattened high resolution file into Painter and began the long process of painting!




The final painting is 640x450mm minus frame (approx 25x18"), mounted, varnished and framed. The show runs from May 13th, for purchase enquiries please contact the gallery.

3 comments:

Hannah Bacalla said...

Awesome work as always Tom. :)

Jana said...

Thanks for sharing the process steps, it is always so exciting to watch how these wonders come into being!!
Good luck with the show Tom!

alex*at*aufdemaur said...

Love it! I've always wondered about your creative process, so thank you for sharing! It's a lovely piece