Brandon Pence

This was one of the hardest challenges I have ever faced as an artist. “Stray Bullet” has so many unique things about it that I’m not sure where to start. Let’s go back a few years… I’m not entirely sure on the exact time frame (2 years maybe?) but it was at night in Fountain Square in Downtown Fort Walton Beach. Steve Burrows, Brad Greek and myself were sitting out in front of the old Artesano Jewels (now the NWFLAA Art Lair) discussing art and artists.

Somehow we got onto the subject of what defines an artist; one of my favorite subjects to discuss, especially with those 2. As we discussed it, I threw myself to the dogs as to whether I was a “real” artist or not. Brad asked me if I had ever done a self portrait; I told him I had not, and he told me every artist has to challenge themselves with a self portrait. That just stuck in the back of my head for awhile… that I wanted to do one now that I had been challenged to do so. It’s just my rebellious nature.

I toyed with different ideas for awhile… as far back as March 11, 2010. That is when Jennifer and I did the photoshoot for my Alice in Wonderland pictures. I was toying with the idea of having one of my models slitting my throat as a clever little joke. We shot a few test pics but I just never liked the idea enough. Here’s one of the test shots:

Never ran with it. Just didn’t feel right to me so I sacked it.

The need to do a self portrait never solidified fully in my mind until I finished my piece, “Horizons:”

Allow me to explain…

Years ago when I first got fired from Cuppy’s Coffee and began doing art for fun, I posted my work on Deviant Art. For shits and giggles I decided to number my first print to separate my new work from my old work. I posted it on Deviant Art as “1 – Freedom” and continued the naming tradition with all of my prints. Sort of inspired by (or absolutely ripping off) the Nine Inch Nails Halo concept; that some works of a collective can be recognized as specific “canon” of sort. How does Horizons fit in? It was #49.

Yep. 49 pieces of art since January 14, 2008 (the date Freedom was posted on deviant art). Pretty cool. But now… fuck. I have to do a self portrait. Just cause.

I’m like that.

Anyways.

Now I had to come up with an idea… my next idea was a more space based theme. This was around September. It didn’t get far for me to realize the idea was shit. However I can embrace that some good ideas will encounter failure so here is the sample I did for that theme:

Sacked it. Hated it.

The next idea, since I was having a hard time defining a style for myself, was going to be a portrait of me made of words. I made a post on my Facebook asking people to describe me with one word. I fed all of the words into a PHP script and had the sizes and words randomly chosen. I did not use all of the words. There is a significance to the number of words I feel is personal and I don’t want to share it right now. If you submitted a word and yours didn’t get used, I appreciate your help, but I never indicated what this was for. I simply asked and you delivered and I appreciate you helping me; let’s leave it at that. =)

I will use all of the words for projects in the future, no worries.

When I noticed Tai Jun hadn’t responded to my FB post I asked him to describe me personally. His immediate response was “fuck.” This was also the response of my boss Kevin Almodovar, by the way…

Anyways TJ asked me why. I told him “no reason” and he said something to the effect of “if you’re thinking of doing one of those stupid portraits where the person is made out of words… don’t.”

Damnit.

Sacked it. Back to the drawing board.

A few weeks went by and I started toying with the idea of basing my self portrait on my personal favorite piece of mine: “Birth.”

“Birth” has always been my favorite piece. It’s not a popular one at all; it’s just my favorite. It’s with the model Sarah Ebear and I think I like it because it was one of the first times I trusted my heart completely with my art. Before that I would take criticism and sometimes alter too much. With “Birth” I did some samples of it to test the idea I had; to combine vector elements with a raster portrait. I did a test that in all honesty was absolutely dreadful…

I was originally going to use Azrael Nightmare for it. She is the model above. I did that test and I was so excited; I knew my idea would work. I remember emailing that to Tai Jun, one of my closest friends. I normally bounce ideas off of TJ when I’m excited so that he can crush my spirit and make me apathetic to the entire idea. I showed him that and I was like “Dude check it out. It will totally work.” He took one look at it and was like “…what the fuck is this?” I was like “IT’S FUCKING AWESOME AND IT’S EVIDENCE MY IDEA WILL WORK SHUT UP”

I just knew it would. I knew in my heart this idea would be cool. Even when I started “Birth” it was crap. It sucked for a long time.

Hard to look at that and stay motivated. I stuck with it though and it paid off. I have always been very proud of that piece and it remains my favorite.

Before I settled on the idea I actually called up Sarah Ebear. Sarah put herself in her artwork a lot so I wanted to get her perspective on the whole thing. Whether it’s vain or megalomaniacal or what have you.

We had a long conversation about it and she really opened my eyes to it. Sarah has always been someone I can turn to when I am creatively stuck and she will set me on the right track. I used to call her my muse for a reason.

During the conversation I told her why I was asking; that I wanted to do a self portrait and I couldn’t settle on a style. She said without hesitation, “you should do it like the one you did of me, Birth.”

I was like “…son of a bitch…”

Sarah has always been on my wavelength but it just felt like the final bit of closure I needed to run with the idea finally. That this was the one that would work.

I had a hard time accepting myself as the model. I have never put a man in my artwork at all, let alone myself! I also couldn’t just fuck off and come back to the idea later. I wanted it to be the 50th so I was stuck.

I must have retaken the pictures in my apartment 4 times. I did them all myself with my Canon 50D on a tripod. I felt asking one of my photographer friends to help would have been putting another artists touch on the overall thing. I respect my photographer friends so I don’t look at them as just “people pushing a button.” I didn’t want to have any of their artistic style in this so I did it myself.

It took awhile to really click but once it did, it just fit together effortlessly.

I did not save a lot of WIP’s (work in progress) while I was working on “Stray Bullet.” Not sure why. I don’t think I ever fully committed to the idea that it would work. In fact I accidentally saved over my “blank.psd” file, a file I use for each art piece, and never bothered renaming it. It still is named blank. Well, blank4a.psd.

Because of that I cannot show you it’s entire creation process.

I can tell you it involved 113 Adobe Illustrator files and 9 PSD’s totaling over 9.31 GB. This style has no tricks; it’s an absolute ton of layers. The video below, while it may seem like one layer, is actually a bunch of layers in an Adobe Illustrator file embedded inside Adobe Photoshop. Meaning each “step” could be one layer in Adobe Photoshop but contain 500 layers in Adobe Illustrator.

So while this is hardly a step by step video showing the creation of “Stray Bullet,” it is a layer by layer breakdown of my final PSD. It is still the most detailed video I have made showing my process from beginning to end.

Here are some pictures I took to send friends during it’s creation:

It’s been a project in the work for over 9 months and I am proud to have it finally finished. I hope you all enjoy it. My 50th piece, my first self portrait, the first time a man has been in my artwork… it has a lot of challenge to it but I am very proud of what I accomplished with it.

Thanks for reading.