Acrylic Self Portrait! + Steps! Mother Earth, FIRST ART SHOW EVER CHICAGO

Hello my fellow steemians!!! ITS ME im back with another big post, this one is a rare one indeed.... I got a call from my uncle who has ton of connections in the art world and he told me about an art show coming up in chicago and that I had a space for my work! OF COURSE I jumped on this. I decided to print my digital art on prints and I also had a thought.

I didn't have a self portrait.. and I didn't have any traditional art!! THIS NEEDED TO BE RECTIFIED!!! =O

So before I get into the show itself I will start with my very large acrylic portrait! Plus I will explain its meaning and my process as well.

• MOTHER EARTH
  

Here is the final product, I am the earth, surrounded by all the elements.

Below me is the EARTH, with the reds and browns and edgy strokes.
to my left is AIR with its blues and greens representing the wind feeding and giving life to the plants and nature.
To my right is FIRE this one is quite self explanatory, fire is my favorite element btw.
And above me, which makes up my horns is WATER which is the source to all life, so it made sense to make it my horns. You can see little bits evaporating in a particle kind of effect.
And lastly me in the center SPIRIT or earth, in the center of everything.

Once completing I even thought about the subject of that spirits and Deities and gods have no sex... mother earth is supposedly a woman but I of course am a man. I felt it means nothing in the grand scheme of things, we are all one with this world, our souls have no sex... but these are just my thoughts.

ONTO the process! =D

1- The sketch process! This canvas is huge.... and I didn't want to just start throwing paint on it so I took a charcoal stick and also my reference pic. Its quite a messy process charcoal on canvas is. It smudges really easily so when I was done i took some hair spray and made a nice coat on it before I began any painting.

Here is MEEEEEE

and then my initial sketch!!!

2- FIRST PAINT!! This is such a simple step, and its always so much fun to first throw some paint on a canvas. I am predominantly a digital artist and haven't painting traditionally in a long time so this was really exciting for me!! ESPECIALLY with it being so huge haha. :) * Its like 3.5 ft tall!!* You can see I started a base for the skin and started throwing on the black!

At this stage I wasn't even sure what I was doing yet!! I just knew I wanted horns... I wanted it to be expressive and most importantly I wanted it to be me.

3- It begins to form. This step was a really important one for me because I began to see what was coming of this painting!! I began experimenting with textures and throwing on large amount of paints... I only knew at this point that I wanted one side to be dark, and the other to be light. A Yin and Yang type of feel. But something was coming.

5- Purpose revealed. At this stage I knew what was going on. I was letting the paint do all the talking, I just felt out everything. It was instinct that I made the horns blue... so now I knew what I had to do.

6- Filling in more Blacks, completing shapes.

For this next step I began filling in blank parts of the canvas that were still missing quite a bit of paint, especially the black parts around the hood. Also the horns have begun a transformation as well...

7- The FACE ALL ABOUT THE FACE!!... and the hand

For this next step its pretty apparent what I was working on. For this piece I wanted the shadow parts of my face to be a nice green color, so that is what I began working on. It was giving me that earth spirit kind of look... it was still quite a ways away from being finished. Of course I also added a third eye, for spiritual reasons of course :)

8- All about that texture!! All about that HAIR!

Here you can see that I added even more black, especially to the hair. You can see the thick strokes, plus also I began on the nails and a bit on the face as well... I am starting to take shape!!

8.5- HERES A SIZE COMPARISON ITS SOOO HUGEE!! XD

9- Bring on the details!!!

Here you can see that I have begun on the eyes and even some little roots on the fingers as well... at this stage of the painting process Ive really began to slow down and began to pick out my spots for detail...

10- On the home stretch.

Here you can see the smoothness of the skin, the shine to the eyes, the roots taking hold of my hand.. even began painting magma in the horns as well * because you know... underground volcanoes in the oceans * at least that's where my thoughts were :) but I am SOOOO close!!

11 - FINAL STEP BEFORE THE FINAL!!!

Here you can see the horns have even more magma... just little details here and there. but I still had quite a ways to go to get to the end. I could tell there was some missing texture over on the right side, and there was something missing from the horns. I needed a flow....

12 - FINISHED!! TIME FOR THE SHOW!!

Here you can see the water evaporating... the flow is finished!! The magma in the horns is brighter, I added particles of green on the left side... on the top left its bright, where the opposite side is complete darkness.

Good - Evil, Darkness, Light... the elements... mother earth, spirituality, and a self portrait all in one.

On our way to chicago!! I was equipped with my canvas prints as well as my large self portrait.. Ill be sure to share the art that I brought along on this post as well!!

We arrived at the Zhoub art gallery!!!

It was a wonderful building filled with all sorts of artists of all walks of life, sculptures... painters, digital artists, photographers...

They even had a sweet glow in the dark room where they were doing live bdsm rope bondage!! * sex not included of course hahahha * I didn't get to explore TOO much because I was stuck talking with all the people that showed up!! =D I wish I would of gotten pictures of the crowd... but I was pretty busy. I will next time!!

there was even a room where an artist did all of his crazy abstract work... it was amazing. he called it

"the heart"

He literally lived in his art... it was amazing.

ANYWAYSSS back to my stuff.

Here is all the art I had printed for starters!! Ive said so much already so ill just post them one after another :)

OHHHH dont forget my business cards too.... ^_^

I was equipped with everything!!! =D Cards art... and an awesome uncle... WHO IS ALSO a FLIPPIN Santa clause during the holiday season!!! He is pretty amazing, one of the best more interesting uncles I could ask for.

we got there and got to the room where my stuff would be displayed and we met his friend named Art. Where he proceeded to talk about the good old days of chicago, and some mafia stories even!! It was pretty incredible to listen to :).

He did some amazing sculpture work... he used to be an architect but got bored! He has quite the tale.

Now he made the suggestion of placing all my canvases down on the floor parallel to the wall to figure out my composition for the wall! SO here is what I came up with! =D With my brothers help too.

IT WAS DONE!!! heres mee.....

and my younger brother was with us too like I said.

THE SHOW WAS A HUGE HIT!!! I should of taken pictures.... should of but I did not. I even got offered 2k for a canvas print!!! AHHH!! it was incredible... I met so many people, got so many compliments. I go again here in about 3 weeks so next time ill take way more pictures of other art for you all to enjoy and snap some pics of the crowd!!

ANYWAYS!! my name is Nycto, and thank you so much for stopping in. I really hope you enjoyed this post! it was certainly a long one.... hahahha ^_^