The Unraveling

This artwork is the final submission from the artist Scott Sholder (Metalhead) for the 'Humanity' event by the Faerian gallery. The artist created this piece in 3 days, inspired by a prompt that was submitted by the public. In a unique twist, instead of being interpreted by an AI, this time the prompt was brought to life by a human artist. The entire creative process was livestreamed online and at the NFC Lisboa event.

Original prompt text: -- 'What does the transitioning experience of dying look or feel like'

Art Medium: -- Digital - photo manipulation using Procreate Pocket

Was AI used? -- No.

How is your final artwork related to the prompt? -- My artwork is a depiction of what I envision as the process of dying. It is based on a dream I had many years ago that stuck with me. The dream version of me felt and saw what it was like to die, which was depicted as the unraveling of my head into colorful series of ribbons into an unknown ethereal space while my capacity for speech vanished and my words turned into gibberish.

Why did you choose this prompt? -- It spoke to me in light of the dream I referenced above, and seemed consistent with my general style and approach to digital art. It gave a lot more room for interpretation than some of the other, more specific prompts. I also thought that my psychedelic and colorful style lent itself to the substance of the prompt, as I imagine (based on my dream) the experience of death to be colorful, trippy, and surreal.

Explain more your creative process: -- My inspiration was the dream I mentioned above. I decided to go with a style and process I knew and that had worked for me already given how many pieces I have created using Procreate photo manipulation and other techniques through similar apps. I took a series of photographs of the head and upper torso of a human figure model, picked the one that fit the frame and my contemplated composition best, and manipulated the colors and shapes using tools in Procreate Pocket until I was satisfied with the color palette. I initially tried some digital painting over the photo, but didn't like it. So I stuck with altering the colors manually and then using the "liquify" and "clone" tools in Procreate to create the tendrils coming off the unraveling head, and then further altered some of the color blocks and added a bright light in the upper right corner using the ""bloom"" function. I toyed with the idea of adding some glitches or animations, and made a couple of variants with glitch blocks, but ultimately decided that the piece did not need that extra dimension and stood on its own as it was.

A last comment? -- This was a lot of fun, thanks for having me!