The Story Behind "la Luna" Painting

In this video you can watch me paint as I explain the story behind my recent "la Luna" painting.

A couple days ago I painted a digital image with a stag beetle holding a red eye. My original ideas was to have a red eye with a skull inside of it and the stag beetle was a random add on that I thought would look nice. I painted it red after thinking about how this image reminded me of the Moon Tarot Card with the red lobster underneath the moon. The final image looked ok ... I thought the skull looked silly inside of the eye but even though the whole thing looked better when it was just a normal red eye, I kept the skull layer visible because ... I had to have a skull in there lol. Then I thought "Why not just have the stag beetle holding the moon? And I can put a skull in the moon and it will look fine." So I started sketching this.

While looking up images of stag beetles online I found out that there are over 1,000 different species of these, called Lucanids. The one I chose to paint is the Lucanus Elaphus. I also decided not to make it as red as a cooked lobster. The flashing red moon idea came at the end when I had finished the painting and wanted to add some animation before uploading.

When I finished the painting I realized that the eyes and nose sockets were too small so I adjusted the whole thing digitally before making the animation.

I am thinking of painting a Tarot deck based off of Entomology because I don't see one out there and I thought it would be neat. What do you guys think? But I had planned to finish a deck of black and white Lineart abstract cards for which I already have the thumbnails for. So the black & white Lineart deck has all minor arcana drawn out but no major arcana. This possible entomology deck has no thumbnails and nothing except this one la Luna card ... and I even have ideas for a pencil drawn tarot deck based off of macabre realism ... omg too many ideas

What do you guys think?

Any art related comments or suggestions?

Thank you for watching my video! Like & Subscribe for more!

To support me with Tips & Donations
"Normal" Currency (non-Crypto ):
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=VHR44E3RAKA3S
Crypto:
https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/78428d7a-20f4-4154-be01-1337598427d5

#XVIII #laLuna #theMoon #moon #gouache #watercolor #mixedmedia #painting #paintingprocess #gouachetutorial #artvlog
#illustration #illustrator #painter #art #artist #tarot #fullmoon #stagbeetle #entomology #lucanid #lucanuselaphus #scientificillustration #surreal #surrealart #surrealism #dream #fantasyart #astrology