I just finished playing Mass Effect ( ME 1, haven't started 2 yet) and found myself having an interesting battle of imagery in my head for the next few days. I normally tend to see the images I want to create through a medieval fantasy lens. My settings are rough hewn mountains and great halls, costumes are generally exaggerated arthurian and my go-to weapons are always greatswords. After playing Mass Effect and getting into the meat of the story, I found a lot of this medieval schema shifting.
I started a few paintings in my usual mode and found myself aching to add wires and consoles, segmented armor and detailed computer chip interfaces. I really wanted to factor in an omni-tool somewhere, but that was going a step too far. This dialogue got me thinking about creating a rather iconic image in fantasy art (typical faerie, perched ontop of a mushroom) and gutting it, filling the insides with wires and blinking nodes.
This is the *almost* final image, which attempts to convey the pull of both genres. I would like to go back and tighten up the computer chip innards of the mushroom (which are a bit hard to see) and make the wings a bit more delicate as well, but that will be left for another day.
