To Paint Or Be Painted

By now, my Art For Art's Sake series has reached over 400 cartoons, and I still enjoy mashing things up, a good sign!

As explained in previous posts (*), almost anything 'artistic' nowadays can usually be incorporated in my cartoons.

PART 1:

I really like using paintings/drawings/pictures in which someone (or something!) is caught in the act of creating a 'masterpiece'...

John Ballantyne's portrait of Thomas Faed in his studio is a classic example.

Walter Caspari's cartoon of a young artist being criticized by his professor was also very useful.

This old Betty Boop book (**) cover follows the same principle, but as you can see, it needs a lot of 'cleaning' up!

PART 2:

Ideally, the elements to be inserted should be as different as possible to provide contrast...

The above Pokémon Illustrator Card is, for whatever reason, a collector's item, supposedly worth gazillions (***)...

Note that I'm showing two slightly different versions, color-wise, here, as colors of all kinds of artwork online are sometimes presented in varying appearances.

I vividly remember the first time I encountered Chris Foss' artwork, amazing spaceships, very impressive...

And Studio Ghibli clearly shows that high-quality animated movies can still be made!

The slightly darker Pokémon turned out to be perfect here; its colors don't clash at all with John Ballantyne's portrait.

Here I aimed for absolute contrast!

The colors of My Neighbor Totoro accidentally matched those of the original dark blue rectangle and 'spilled paint' on the floor.

After 'inserting' a new piece, I zoom in (300x) to check for any irregularities, like the above!

Getting the edges (of where the two different pieces meet) smoothed out usually takes a bit of time.

For that, I use the 'clone' tool, a highly efficient piece!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this brief overview of how I work.

Time for me to finish this post, dump it online, and start concentrating on new AFAS cartoons!

(*) https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/art-for-art-s-sake

https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/night-at-the-art-museum

https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/c%C3%A9zanne-mashed-up

https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/she-drifted-from-bed-to-bed

https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/mashing-things-up

(**) https://www.fleischerstudios.com/book.html

(***) https://www.tcgplayer.com/content/article/A-Short-History-of-Pikachu-Illustrator-the-Most-Expensive-Pok%C3%A9mon-Card/d26cffe2-6e5f-4720-8519-a6317c11c060/?srsltid=AfmBOoqWJFs0_MwcyqqYQ_Sn715rsz3GOAoHQY88Vl-oaEeuRi-OB5zO

Note: I post daily new AFAS cartoons on:

https://www.instagram.com/art58koen/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/art58koen/

https://www.tumblr.com/art58koen

https://x.com/KoenOlie