The Space Whales Project
This is probably my biggest project to date, and definitely one of the longest!
I’m very proud of this one.
You might be able to guess by the logo, but this piece was commissioned by the same client who commissioned the Cu Sithe project! This piece is actually album art for their album titled “The Shadow Behind the Sun”
Check out their page here, Facebook page and Spotify!
There’s really no doubt about it: this is one of the biggest projects I’ve done yet, and it took a long time to complete. It’s one of the first truly “lineless” pieces I’ve done - which is to say, there’s no lineart! It was also the first time I’ve drawn whales, too, which was super interesting since I had a lot of freedom to pick what species of whale I wanted to use for this album art. Inspired greatly by some of the music from the client’s upcoming album The Shadow Behind the Sun (check out one of the tracks) and by the client’s own story for his music, the only real goal I was given was to make some space whales, and frame the scene with some kind of spaceship’s window, as if you were looking out at the whales!
In the end, I decided to go with the fairly traditional “whale” that everybody easily recognises and, to be fair, probably thinks of first when you say whale in the first place: the gentle giant, the Humpback Whale. There was a lot of design planning on this commission, from working out how many whales the image would even have to working out what pose they would be in. In the end I decided to go with two whales, which seemed like a number that would be able to fill a lot of the canvas without totally dominating it and making it more “whale” than “space”.
After a lot of back and forth, playing with different ideas, I finally had two poses that I liked, and set them up on the canvas in a way I thought looked aesthetic. Since I wasn’t sure how the whales would be positioned at first in relation to each other, you can see that both of them had full body sketches done, which let me move them around freely and try to envision how they’d look once coloured. When I finally decided on a position for both that I felt worked well, it was time to move on to, bit by bit, colouring the piece in!
The first step to colouring was to get the flats down for the whales. In the end I chose not to deviate too much from the natural colour of humpback whales.
The second step was actually filling in the background; I wanted to have a galaxy of some kind visible on the canvas that it looked like the whales might be migrating away from. Something that could bring the piece together, and also let me work out where lighting and shading would go on the whales so they could really pop.
With a better idea of how to finish the whales with shading, the next step was adding that shading as well as the highlights. It was also time for the scary bit, for me at least: turn off the sketch!
I’ll be honest, I don’t really remember how long this all took to do, haha. It was done across several sessions, with some of them being longer than others, and one of those sessions actually streamed on my Twitch page (something I hope to do more frequently in the future.) It was certainly a fun process though, spending time on all the little details and then sometimes using far larger brushstrokes to add subtle little changes of hue or saturation. I played a lot with how I wanted to shade and highlight these whales, and wound up focusing a lot more on shading them and giving them limited but rather stark highlights. As the image was coming together, I also realised that I wanted these whales to be a little magical - they’re in space, after all, so they certainly aren’t your average whale - and I looked into how I might do that without overpowering any of the work on them I’d already done.
I also had to, of course, finish the rest of space behind them. Have you ever seen the Milky Way galaxy at night in a place with no light pollution? It’s incredible! And very surprisingly bright!
The finished product: whales, in space!
I decided in the end that glowing eyes that left rather pretty glowing trails would be the best way to make these whales seem a little ethereal and give them that slightly magical touch. It also helped solidify the idea that these whales were indeed swimming through the space they occupied, as before the addition of the trails they did look unfortunately quite static. Filling in the rest of space was also super fun to do, adding all sorts of little glowing stars.
I have to admit that I spent a lot more time on that galaxy than I thought I’d have to, and it turns out that trying to make a galaxy look bright, pretty and full of a few celestial bodies is not all that easy. I think I revisited that galaxy several times before I decided I was happy with it, adding bits of stars here, taking away bits of glow there, trying to add a mixture of pinks and purples so it didn’t look entirely like one solid colour. I am super pleased with how it turned out in the end, but it was definitely more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Fun to do, though, and I’m definitely looking forward to doing some personal art where I do more space backgrounds! What can I say? I like shiny things, and stars are very shiny.
Once again, I’d like to remind you that this commissioned piece is album artwork for the up and coming album (dropping on April 1st) called “Shadow Behind the Sun” that the client of this piece is producing. You can check out the Facebook page, the website, and even preview one of the tracks from the album before the release date! And, once again, you can see the other songs they’ve already made if you check out their Spotify page. The whales in space compel you to check them out. ;)