Daddy demon Process
I started this piece in April of 2020, my goal when starting this piece was to deliver a photorealistic demon face for my fellow fantasy lovers who want to see what "demonic" looking characters look like in real life. I fell in love with the smoothness of oils, and I felt I could capture this to just shock people with curiosity. At first, I was going to have it be a 3D face horns and teeth on the 2D canvas, but that changed as my vision changed and time grew.
When I was creating this character, I wanted a smug looking, bright red demon. As I mentioned I am a self-taught oil painter, I went into this piece with no direction, and a sketch I made that I had in mind. I was just so excited to get to painting, which is what happens to most of my pieces. The images shown here were from 2020 and I am grateful I held onto them long enough for me to finish the piece and make this blog.
Here I was building the face of the demon, as I was painting, I was figuring out how to get the face shape I desired, it took some surgery but I was able to figure it out.
When I am making these characters, I truly feel like I am having a deep conversation with them and their needs, how they want to be pictured. It’s odd but it’s a piece of me being released within them in each stroke
It may be my inner perfectionist who keeps me aware of the smallest details but i’m trying to adopt exceptionalism. While making the demon, I was in love with the face I had created but was not so fond of the teeth. After reaching this point I decided to hang him up on the wall for a year and ignore him as I created other art. He gave my Andy's Forgotten Toys type vibe that whole year. But he wasn’t the only one, I had 2 other oil paintings I started and took my sweet time on.
It took me two years to complete the piece, finally picking up again in January of 2022 with a new vision. but I truly feel it was for divine reasons, I felt I needed to learn more and expand my creativity in the meanwhile of not working on it. 67I started with painting the background around his head and to cover up the jaw and what I didn’t like in a contrasting color, I chose emerald green, which I felt looked spectacular.
With the new vision I had with my goals in art, I wanted to incorporate more 3D textures into my pieces, I wanted them to almost be jumping out at you. I had a medium called Flexible molding paste and started using it to create 3D like teeth. I was using a plastic spoon and a pallet knife, and was learning how to control the medium as I was making these teeth, you can see me building it up and back down in the video. It took practice to get what I wanted and came out so cool.
I then let the paste dry and painted over the paste ** Just a note for people who want to try this process I want to recommend not doing what I did and paint oil directly onto the flexible paste. I recommend painting a layer of gesso in between. I didn’t do this because I was impatient and had no gesso. Still don’t. not priority. After this I felt the piece was far too empty and decided to construct 3D horns for him.
I used Aluminum Foil as the base shape I wanted and used the flexible molding paste to build the horn texture around, I used the same technique as the teeth to be able to have the matching with their grittiness. I made the piece on a separate'. panel canvas. When applying the pieces, I used Shoe Goo which takes 24 hours to dry. Those babies are stuck on there for good, I hope.
When I was painting the horns, I was going for a look similar to the teeth, all bloody and gruesome. I was using yellow ochre and crimson red for this as well as titanium white. I covered up his face to make him safe and sound while painting. I should have painted them before pasting them but it’s okay I learned from it.
the left horn is very wrong here
As I was working on the piece, I realized the left horn wasn’t angled to my liking, so I sawed it off and rebuilt it. Starting by putting painters’ tape on the piece itself so I didn't get the paste everywhere (you can see this process on my YouTube video). While adding the paste I added texture to the eyebrows and cheek then went ahead and started making a 3d Ear. I thought I wanted to add moss to the horns to add a little oomf but it ended up looking weird, so I didn’t do it.
While working on the ear, I had to do it in layers and keep building up as it dried, which takes 24 hours to dry. I also used an exact-o knife to shape the ear in certain places I wanted it hanging off the corner because my sibling enlightened me that if you have something off the canvas you want a triangle of other things off the canvas for balance. I then added some bloodily drips off the teeth for the final object off the canvas.
I put this piece in a gallery and on the day of the event someone asked me why I created it. And simply the only way I could put it was I wanted something cool for people to look at. He told me he felt he was a Protective Charm and I 100% agreed with that statement, I even made sure to create a protective energy barrier around him while I was there. I really love how other people’s perspectives help open up mine as well.
If you would like to see the whole process timelapse, be sure to check out my YouTube video at Cip of Joelle.
If you love this piece a lot, be sure to check out the stickers available of him below.
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