Inappropriate Imp

"In some of the oldest forests, where man seldom trend, still lives the Garic. A type of fat imp who spends its days smoking, drinking and making mischief. They are also prone to tempt people -and animals- into smoking and drug use, so it can entertain itself by watching your foolery. "

A painting inspired by the ‘Creative Game for Fantasy Artists’ Fantasy Genesis by Chuck Lukacs. It’s a book where you roll dice to get a combination of results to inspire a painting. Here is the book’s official blog where you can see what other artist got.

My results (for the humanoid sheet) was as follows:
Major Form: Bubbles (which inspired the body shape)
Minor: Nuts and Bolts (which inspired the head crest)
Surface: Fungi and Mushroom (you can see he has toadstool skin pattern)
Action: Glow (though the humanoid isn’t glowing himself he will be glowing from the lighting)
Emotion: Laughing.

I don’t know why I wanted this little forest imp to be slightly sinister, encouraging young animals to smoke. I was tempted, at first, to keep with the mushroom theme and have him laughing childishly at a mushroom of phallic-description…but as much as I like the idea of painting phallic shaped mushrooms someone could take it as pornographic, which is not my intention. In the end, inspired by a Watership Down themed dream I had, I plonked a baby rabbit in there... though how the pipe came about is a bloody mystery, haha.

Overall though, I'm very pleased how this finished up. Getting my computers RAM boosted from 920 MB to 1.90ish GB really helped make the painting process smoother.


-----------------SPECIAL THANKS:
*Chuck Lukacs for his awesome book!
* 'Nitsch' for the Baby Rabbit Photo that helped with the rabbit.
* Marta Dahlig’s Grass and Fur brush that appeared in ImagineFX Issue 43.

ACK! The Triangle of Death! It basically represents the composition has been trapped into the lower-right half of the painting leaving dead space in the upper-left. I needed something there to make the composition flow more smoothly. So, with the bright red of the Garic drawing the eye immediately, I have the idea of bright white butterflies leading to the rabbit, which leads back to the imp with the cold smoke. The foreground grass will also help to keep the eye from straying off the screen.

That arm looked a little limp and lifeless just hanging from his body so I moved it to rest or rubbing his belly.

I edited Marta Dahlig's grass and fur brush for something I found more comfortable and then, with circular brush strokes, put a basic grassy texture of grass. With a basic round brush I then put in my own grass blades to break the uniformity and for better control.