93. The pond and its creation.

To be continued...

Now you've seen Suicide Pond, but it took some time before I myself knew exactly what this important location looked like. That it was shaped like a skull came early, but not how it was to be presented. Below is one of the early versions.

It doesn't feel right. Not beyondish enough, and the skull is too hard to discover. Not happy with the next solutions either, I decide to leave the comic for a spell. I think this is in 2005, the year before the first book of Beyond A Travelogue was published in Norway. I now want to do a large, stand-alone painting involving the pond. And, if the background ends up useable, I'll stuff it into the Frog-man's story as well.

Not so long after that, this appears on my sketch-pad.

A sort of baroque image of some girls diving from a cliff, and landing in a pond it would be impossible for them to reach without a hang-glider or something. Okay. Fine, but I need a story. Some depth - or I just won't bother doing the work. My brain needs something to chew on while I draw and paint. What if the nearest nymph is scared of heights? Boring. But what if it's a group suicide, where one girl tries to fight against peer pressure? My interest in the painting is now on the rise, and as a result, ideas flow more freely.

When I was twenty, I enjoyed the hospitality of my American family for six months or so, and drove all over the less inhabited parts of New York, and especially New Jersey, in an old but powerful Dodge pick-up truck. There are pretty villages and small towns, looking like sets from early Spielberg movies.

Newton, New Jersey.

But it was the large trees and forests of New Jersey which would later become the inspiration for The Neverending Forest. I've only experienced one fall over here, but that was the most insane explosion of natural colors I've ever seen. I actually planned to go back this fall with my new camera, but unfortunately I'm flat broke again. More on these forests here and here. But back to the painting--

There was a strong sense of adventure among the girls I met in New Jersey. Probably a consequence of living in such close proximity to the magical island called Manhattan. These girls don't fear a dive into the unknown. But there are always those who stay at home - who don't dare to jump. There's a sort of story here now. I make a fast color sketch on my Wacom board, based on the earlier pencil thumbnail.

To create some life in the left corner of the image, I give the main character lots of hair that moves in the breeze. With a little help from Tom Waits, the painting also have a title now: Jersey Girls.

I start working on the first jumper, then move to the rock up close. To increase the distance between foreground and background, I'm keeping this area dark. Another optical illusion at work here is an old comic strip trick. In our part of the world, where we read from left to right, things will appear faster when moving in this direction.

From Gunvald and The Stray Puppies (2007).

I also consider making the rock larger, let it fill out more of the space in the bottom right. I decide to push the decision back until the rest of the picture is done.

 

Now, the background calls for my attention. I start painting in a new layer, beneath the ones where the girls reside. First, I sketch in a bunch of trees, and also finish some of them. This has to become a forest - not just a patchwork of autumn colors, but a large collection of individual trees.

I jump to the pond. Paint in the left eye/island.

I'm also going to let the pond function like others of its kind, and have brooks go in and out. A small waterfall is placed, and a smaller incoming brook on its left.

For sound effects, turn on a couple of water faucets, for now realism will be turned up a notch.


If you do it right, reflection in water can have an almost magical effect. It can pull out the dept in something which at first seems flat and boring.

There are several ways to do this, but here I paint in the reflection rather softly, and then fade it out slightly with a thin layer of dark blue on top.

Then back to drawing trees. Lots and lots of trees. At first I thought steering clear of copy/paste would be a good idea, but...

Crap! How many trees do I have to paint for this thing? Hundreds? I'm not wasting time counting them, that's for sure. It's in moments like this I'm filled with gratitude to the digital gods for creating layers. While doing a time consuming painting such as this one, it's nice being able to jump between the different elements. It keeps you from getting bored, and is, in my humble opinion, the greatest advantage digital painting has on traditional techniques.

A short while later, the nearest girl has her looks.

I usually start with the face, then pick colors from it for the rest of the body. Her hair also gets a small dosage of new pixels, before I force myself back to the forest and the pond. More details, more shadows.

The island to the right emerges from the water. I want the islands to be mysterious. Scary, but still kind of alluring. Like death. The "nose," the last of the islands, gets some megalith-looking rocks.

Two of the girls have waded ashore on the last island. I paint the reflections. The splash and the rings in the water from the landing girls. And trees. Trees, until I once more overdose on cellulose.

During the following hours, I switch between the girls and the trees. I also paint in the rock in the lower right, and we're done. I could keep adding details for weeks, of course, but as it turns out, I'm not all that happy with the painting. I do like the pond though, and this ends up in the comic, while the rest remains hidden. Until now.