Swilling at 344 Kelvin

This picture came from a sketch I drew rapidly in November 2013. When I finished it, I looked down at the pencil and thought cleaning it up would be impossible.

A long procession of anatomy-fixing, line-widening, and smoke-positioning occurred.

Hide Content

Because I don’t feel like it’s immediately evident, I will try to explain this picture:
A stylized deadmau5 wades into the brackish waters of experimentation and raw creative fodder. The smoke represents his own creative output, which was material in his environment that he modified by burning it. The essence of the output wafts around him, as music does in the air. The music-as-smoke is constantly changing and folding into itself again and reforming and falling and crunching and elongating as the mouse continues to wander through the murky ideas of the early morning.

- - -

The final version, finished in June 2014.
This picture has had many previous versions.
The first version was much brighter, and deadmau5’s face more doughy:
Once 71C was created, I renamed this picture for that track. 71C is 344K.
I imagine that song to have very blue shades, even though 71°C is around 160°F.
The mau5’s face is still not as lined or as gaunt as it will be in the end.
Here’s the long progress animation. What this doesn’t show you very well (being limited to a gif’s color range) are the subtle changes in smoke color closer to the end. The picture was intensively optimized to its current colors.

Art

More

Links

Swilling at 344 Kelvin