“You’ve been suffering,Hiding your pain.
Unshed tears on the edge,
“Just water under the bridge”, you say.
Is it too late
To make myself a safe place?
I could not see
The dangers, the sacrifices
You were making.
Hurt you, hurt me,
Hurt you. Never meant to
Hurt you, hurt me.
I need to make myself a safe place
For you to cry, baby,
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.
So we built you some wings
To help you to flee
From your demanding
Dark angel and me.
Is it too late
To make myself a safe place?
I went too far
When we flew too close
To our star.
It hurt you, hurt me,
Hurt you. Never meant to
Hurt you, hurt me.
I need to make myself a safe place
For you to cry, baby,
To cry, baby,
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.”
[ Wings – Tori Amos ]
I feel like I should spend a few words on this photo, if only for how much work it took me and what satisfaction it brought me in the end.
So, Tori Amos’ latest album, Native Invader, flooded my mind with images, one of which is this one. I didn’t really sit down and think like I often do, I just visualised something and decided to go for it. This is why I didn’t really consider the whole metaphor in the lyrics when I came up with this image: what really got me about this song is the part about big boys needing to cry, i.e. get in touch with their emotions and fragility, which I find a very important message nowadays. Also, I liked the idea of trying to become someone’s safe place even if there’s been some disagreement and mutual hurting: it’s never too late to turn around and mend a relationship.
This is pretty much what inspired me: the eponymous wings are not attached to the protagonist so he can fly away as in the lyrics, but to the narrator, laid down as a shelter of sort so the protagonist can let himself feel fragile. It was a compelling image but I really didn’t know how to pull it off: nine years of Infernal Lords have taught me how difficult it is to find realistic wings for shooting, unless I turn to full-blown digital art.
And that’s pretty much what I did: instead of having actual wings, in real life or added digitally, I decided to draw them as if I were drawing on a photo with markers.
I came up with this idea while listening to another couple of songs: first came Bang and then Climb. I envisioned both as photograph-drawing hybrids, and then I felt like Reindeer King and Wildwood could work in a similar style, too. So why not Wings? So next thing I knew, I had a little series of visually homogenous works ready to be done.
I’ll be honest: this was a very difficult image to pull off. Not the photo per se which, once I did some location scouting, was one of the smoothest self-portraits I ever took, but the post-production was massive. I honestly didn’t even know if I was skilled enough to do it, as drawing is not my strongest suit. It took me three solid evening of work and I’m sure that someone with more practice with a graphic tablet would have done it in half the time and a tenth of the effort, but having drawn something that actually looks good, blends with the photo and is exactly what I envisioned is a massive self-confidence fix. Perhaps I really am capable of doing more than I think and am just too scared to try out!
Now, before this turns into the billionth unfinished long-term project, I’m not really making big plans about it. I’m not even going to do the whole album as some songs I really don’t like, or they just don’t speak to me. I’m just taking it as it is and doing what I can when I can.
On a side note about the title: Wings is going to be a work in my Inspiration Hurts series, so I decided to keep that as a subtitle while using the line that caught my attention as the main one. This is also going to happen if I decide to take the other photos I have in mind.
This is pretty much what inspired me: the eponymous wings are not attached to the protagonist so he can fly away as in the lyrics, but to the narrator, laid down as a shelter of sort so the protagonist can let himself feel fragile. It was a compelling image but I really didn’t know how to pull it off: nine years of Infernal Lords have taught me how difficult it is to find realistic wings for shooting, unless I turn to full-blown digital art.
And that’s pretty much what I did: instead of having actual wings, in real life or added digitally, I decided to draw them as if I were drawing on a photo with markers.
I came up with this idea while listening to another couple of songs: first came Bang and then Climb. I envisioned both as photograph-drawing hybrids, and then I felt like Reindeer King and Wildwood could work in a similar style, too. So why not Wings? So next thing I knew, I had a little series of visually homogenous works ready to be done.
I’ll be honest: this was a very difficult image to pull off. Not the photo per se which, once I did some location scouting, was one of the smoothest self-portraits I ever took, but the post-production was massive. I honestly didn’t even know if I was skilled enough to do it, as drawing is not my strongest suit. It took me three solid evening of work and I’m sure that someone with more practice with a graphic tablet would have done it in half the time and a tenth of the effort, but having drawn something that actually looks good, blends with the photo and is exactly what I envisioned is a massive self-confidence fix. Perhaps I really am capable of doing more than I think and am just too scared to try out!
Now, before this turns into the billionth unfinished long-term project, I’m not really making big plans about it. I’m not even going to do the whole album as some songs I really don’t like, or they just don’t speak to me. I’m just taking it as it is and doing what I can when I can.
On a side note about the title: Wings is going to be a work in my Inspiration Hurts series, so I decided to keep that as a subtitle while using the line that caught my attention as the main one. This is also going to happen if I decide to take the other photos I have in mind.
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