The Ancient Kaiju Project

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...and other big things painted over pre-existing art

Laputa: Castle In The Sky Over Achensee / Scholastika - Original by Franz Richard Unterberger

The Iron Giant at the lake in the mountains by Switzerland. | Original by Alexei Savrasov.

At-At Among The Sierra Nevada | Original by Albert Bierstadt

This post is about my most recent project which focuses on learning to master traditional looks by painting Kaiju´s and other big things in existing classic landscape paintings.

Kaiju at Bridal Falls / Yosemite Valley | Original Painting by Albert Bierstadt

My approach is about learning.

Structure, lighting and paint strokes used by the original artists have a sophisticated signature - emulating a similar look in Photoshop without even touching the original is exciting!

Kaiju Evening at the Juniata | Original by Thomas Moran

All the creatures or objects you see below are painted by hand with the use of a Wacom Cintiq pen display. The difficulty lies in recreating the brushes, the strokes and the general mood.
It requires a keen understanding of working in Photoshop, painting and art in general.

Kaiju Evening at the Juniata - Painting Process

You could call it high-end artistic retouching - but that would be a boring matter to me, I added something that is not there in the first place to make learning challenging and fun.

Godzilla in the Mountains | Original painting by Hermann Herzog

The result is a series of mash-up-artworks that are both; a declaration of love to the old Hudson River School and a tribute to the popular modern cult icons of our times.

Godzilla in the mountains - process Video

My ambition in following this series is to keep in the back of my mind that if the original artists would still be alive - I would want them to approve of my remix/cover version.