Brain Dark Concept Art By Katherine Lightwood

Brain Dark Concept Art    

By  Katherine Lightwood

Living beings no matter how small it may be, is always in search of possibilities. Possibilities to make its survival more comfortable or to adapt itself to its habitat in time of threats and disaster.

A one celled Amoeba is also searching for possibility, to adapt itself to its environment much more efficiently then its earlier generations. Human also share this same characteristics, this is called Evolution. And an innate quality of evolution is creativity, the art of creating. In human body our brain is the only organ which made us a species that had successfully searched countless ways of possibilities.

One of my favourite Poet Emily Dickinson once said,

“Our brain is wider than the sky.”

And no matter how metaphorical it sounds, but this sentence is the most accurate manifestation of brain. It is heart of all awareness, centre of all creations possible to mankind. The most intense emotions like love which we generally associate with our heart are actually generated from brain.

Scintillating dance of neurotransmitters and electrical signals firing through our neurons leads to the spark of creativity that made us so complex. From the dawn of human civilisation to ascending stairs of advancement and sophistication, everything we see around which our forefathers would have found quite surreal is all work of this magic bean.

Since my childhood I was always fascinated by human brain. I tried to study it both biologically and philosophically, but always found myself stuck in the maze of my unanswered questions. Few years ago, I came across an amazing book called “Embracing the wide sky” by Daniel Tammet. After reading that, I got some great insights about brain and mind. He is an autistic savant who has a brain condition called Synesthesia. In this condition, different parts of the brain that specialises in different tasks for example smell and vision gets cross connected. And if cross connection occur between these areas that are normally separate, then things gets really mixed up. Therefore, we might able to see a sound or hear a colour. And in his case he could see numbers as shapes.

And even though it’s a very rare condition, it really forced me to think outside the box. As, I am struggling to become an artist, I find it quite interesting how people project their creativity into their art.

Art gods like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, how they would have created such ravishing masterpieces? What was their thinking process when they were sculpting the faces of gods and angels? How different was their thought process from the common folks like us? Were they possessed any supernatural powers or the Lord himself was pouring powers of divinity over them?

On the other hand, there are academicians and scientists and their profound inventions and discoveries throughout the course of history. And here we are at the brim of urbanisation only because of the boon of their exquisite mind.

Few months ago, I was feeling really hopeless, struggling very hard to find inspiration for my artworks. Read books, did my research to get inspired, but everything was in vain. I was blank, the huge void in my mind was engulfing me. My sketching file was lying lifeless on the table. And that’s how I was passing my days, being extremely useless. 

Next day, I went to my institute as usual, thought my day would be unproductive as always. I was sitting in my class scribbling something when one of my classmates came and literally dragged me into our teacher’s cabin. Actually, we both had some doubt related to our studies. So, I thought if I get a chance, why not discuss this problem with him?

But I was unsure about this; I didn’t wanted to bother him with this vague problem of mine. After we discussed our doubts related to our studies, I thought it’s better not to discuss my issue. I wasn’t ready to validate my stupidity in front of my teacher.  I remained tongue tied as usual. I got up from my seat and started walking towards the door with a lazy pace. At that meantime he called us,

“Hey wait! I have an idea for you guys?”

A huge wave of relief stuck me. As if someone has lifted big piece of rock from my shoulders, which I never realised was there. Yes! I was that desperate to get some inspirations. We both quickly got back into our chair and he started explaining his concept. I tried my best to listen to him as keenly as possible. I tried very hard to engrave every word he said in my mind.

Even though at first the concept seemed quite raw and grotesque, but it was so beautiful that I could hardly explain that in words. Only illustrating that would do the justice.

Yet I was so passionate about the concept, I didn’t know how much my feeble hand could portray that. If I could accurately depict his concept as he had imagined. That particular concept was reminding me of Salvador Dali’s paintings. It was very raw, dark and metaphorical but still so enchanting. This is something Tim Burton and Dali’s combined mind would have made.

And all I understood was that creativity is a very rocky road. And beyond every beautiful mind there is pain and suffering. Just like most beautiful roses have the sharpest thorns. My mind was all over the place. I was trying to understand the concept and at the same time thinking how to execute it. 

And speaking of mind, I wandered what my teacher was thinking when he was sharing this concept with us. What kinds of thoughts were lurking in horizons of his mind? And how different was his mind form ours? Well, these questions remained unanswered as always.

After I reached home I quickly got into work. According to his concept I had to illustrate a brain, as if it’s a seed and flowers are blooming out of it and roots are growing deeper below. So, I decided to make a very realistic brain, to give it a raw look.  At first I started drawing a rough sketch of brain with fading brush as usual on a new document of Adobe Photoshop. 

After that I started with a base colour of burnt sienna, flesh tint and bright pink. After the base colour was done I started adding details. 

Little by little I started drawing blood capillaries and other crevices of brain. I didn’t get into much scientific details, I rather focused on its aesthetics.

After I was done with my brain, I tried to create some long stems out of it. I thought it would be better if those stems look fleshy. So, I used the same colour pallet for fleshy stems. To make it more realistic I also made veins and blood vessels. 

Now it was the time to make flowers that would describe creativity. As my teacher emphasised mainly on flowers, I tried my very best to keep his words. I searched about some of the most beautiful flowers on the internet, and came up with some ideas. I thought to add different flowers like rose, dahlia, tulip and daisy to portray those flowers of creativity.

I got back to work; and tried to draw them as realistic as possible. I painted them in similar ways as anyone would paint in oil or acrylic colours. 

At that point I was done with painting all the flowers. Then I moved on to make roots and soil. For roots I choose to make it black with slight dark spread, and the soil with dark brown hue. After I was done with that the result was very brutal. I was not sure if it could satiate my teacher’s imagination.

I came long way into that painting, and there was no turning back at that time. So to make it a bit mellow, I added an earthy yellow and brown gradient. And that’s how I finished my piece. 

I was very sceptical to show that illustration to my teacher. I had no idea if I was successful to depict his concept properly. Anxiety got into my nerves and after a few days of delay I finally showed it to him. He suggested some slight changes and it was done.

And my dear readers, that was my ode of creating this brain concept art.

Thank you for reading my blog, hope you all had a beautiful day.

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Katherine Lightwood