CONCEPT

In my recent video I made a painting about the Pharaoh’s dream. This is the second part wherein the pharaoh’s dream is about ears of grain. As usual I did not capture the whole story but just the concept. The pharaoh was not actually in the dream nor riding a horse. I just thought of putting some animated figures in the landscape. There is more story in the landscape if you put characters or other objects.Although it sounds that it forfeits the content of landscape. It’s my first time to paint a horse. I realized it could have been more interesting if it was semi-mummified but I am not yet ready  to draw a semi-mummified horse. It will again boil down to the skills in drawing by which I need more practice. For the meantime, I painted what I can do.I  also deconstructed the character design of the Pharaoh. I used my homemade Payne’s Gray hue for his clothes and sneakers for his footwear. They are supposed to be Stansmith with the Navy Blue label at the back part of the sneakers But I also used the prototype body figure of the pharaoh with slim waistline and youthful image. And of course the skin tone is reddish  brown.

If you noticed I made 3 consecutive paintings about Bible stories. I studied in a Catholic school and the Bible serves as my window to the ancient past. When I read the Bible, there are stories about how magnificent Egypt was or is for me until this present time. The way Hollywood portrayed The Ten Commandment amazed me a lot but I just don’t like the way that Egyptians appeared to be villains. Because in this story, of the nation, God is in favor  of Egypt saving them from 7 years of drought by providing them knowledge on how to store grains.  

PAINTING PROCESS

Let us go to the painting process. For the colorscheme, I used Payne’s Gray and Maroon. I did not plan for this but it is one of my experiments using Alizarin Crimson. I learned to love this color. Alizarin Crimson is more like a red violet or cool red. It is  not a shouting color. I love it when I mix Ultramarine Blue or Burnt Sienna. Like the field is a combination of Burnt Sienna and Alizarin Crimson. It reminds me of the saturation effect in Photoshop. Other than Alizarin Crimson I also used Parchment for highlights. It is a bit muted creamy color and reminds me of yummy cream cheese spread – maybe that is why I like it.     

For the brushing technique, I used wet dabber to paint the dark blue sky and dry round brush in the field to give some texture to the leaves. If you will notice, the road that the horse is walking through is darker. I applied more Mars Black to it. I also made the horse appear as if it was floating. It’s a bit challenging to paint the pharaoh because I haven’t painted much of a full body, just a few. The face is also small so it is hard to put details. The grains are basically done using round brush 1.

TOOLS

For the tools I used –  acrylic pad, black gesso, masking tape, drawing board, easel, Derwent White Charcoal, Golden Clear Leveling Gel, Borciani Bonazzi paintbrushes, palette knife, Phoenix tear-off palette, Liquitex Basics – Ultramarine Blue, Mars Black, Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna and Parchment,and Gamvar Varnish 

I hope you like my video of Ears of Grain. BTW I’m a graphic designer. I also create websites, motion graphics and video editing. To know more of my services, please also visit my website Sandjackal.com to see also the gallery of my artworks. Thank you for watching.