How a plan for a portrait morphed into a Mandalorian surfer and a possible new artistic path.
Last night, I was all set for a digital painting session. I’d recently picked up some new oil paint brushes for Procreate – specifically the ones by Manero Brushes – and was genuinely keen to dive in. My initial plan was to try a portrait, something inspired by the incredibly bold, vibrant, and textural style of Françoise Nielly, whose work I really admire. But, as often happens when you sit down to create, my mind started to wander pretty quickly.
One moment I was thinking about Nielly’s expressive strokes, and the next, I had this almost impulsive urge to quickly mock up a digital collage – an astronaut, of all things, riding a wave. No sooner had that image popped into my head, though, than it started to shift and morph again. All the while, I wanted to simply experiment with those new oil brushes.
It was somewhere in that slightly chaotic, free-associating middle ground – with thoughts of portraits, astronauts, waves, and oil paint textures all swirling about – that this particular piece started to take shape. Quite unexpectedly, a Mandalorian helmet found its way onto a surfer, and the whole image began to blend together. There was no grand plan for it; it just started to happen, and as it did, it simply felt right. It clicked.
And now, looking at it, I’m wondering if this is a direction I want to explore more seriously. This unexpected fusion of digital collage techniques with more traditional painting styles, where a bit of randomness can spark an idea… There’s a certain freedom in it.
It’s early days, of course, but I think I’m starting to get a clearer sense of where my creative path might be wanting to lead me. It’s less about forcing a specific outcome and more about being open to these happy accidents and seeing where they go.
Device: iPad Gen 9 & Apple Pencil Gen 1
Apps: Procreate
