Sticking to my creative goals, I am experimenting and playing 3 times a week to stretch myself as a creative. Here, I broke out my grunge brushes, which I just love, but I created a brush from my own photograph for the rabbit. If anyone would be interested in the brush, I would be happy to upload it—just ask.
Earlier versions had “YEAR OF THE RABBIT” text on it as well, but near the end I decided to dump it. They say that a piece is done when there’s nothing left to take away, and that was certainly something I experienced as I hammered out the final version.
Tags: brushes, creative play, Photoshop, year of the rabbit
Great texture. The stamp look for a rabbit seems so off, like something that definitely doesn’t belong on a wall.
I feel a bit of fiction swirling in my head:
…
The automatic teller showed him a young, smooth, smiling young woman, unlike any he had actually met inside a bank, right alongside the message “Account Overdrawn.” He swore, under his breath at first because he thought he was a well-behaved man. He punched the button to retrieve his card. The screen message changed: Machine Error. Please see customer service during business hours.
He let it out this time, the curse on all things banking echoing off the blank concrete echoed in the small plaza full of scrubbed concrete planters under a glass roof that kept the rain off him. It didn’t stop the cold air from whipping around the plaza, sneaking through his scarf and dancing across the nape of his neck.
The fluorescent lights made everything look ill, even the concrete steps, the empty planters, and his own reflection in the cold plexiglass of the automated teller.
It was two AM. There was no one else around. Everyone else had the sense or money to get out of the cold. He didn’t have any money and doubted he had much sense left. He tugged on his scarf to fight the cold but it didn’t help.
This place was too clean, too white. Too cold, in every way one could use the word. It was sterile, except for the blood stain on the wall, near the corner. It was small and neat, unlike the giant smear he was thinking of becoming just to show them. It was an unfocused thought. Which them? His soon-to-be ex? The boss that fired him four days before Christmas? It wouldn’t bother them in the least, if he became a frozen smear of blood on the concrete pavement. Suicide there would be a passive-aggressive gesture of useless selfishness.
Besides, the more he looked, the less it looked like a smear of blood. For one, it looked too clean. For another, it looked like something. He walked closer, kneeling into the wind and kamikaze drops of rain, to see what exactly it was.
A rabbit.
A stinking rabbit.
A stinking rabbit with “2011” stamped over it.
He checked his watch. January 1st. Twenty-eleven by the slimmest of margins.
There was something else buried in the image. The rabbit was solid red, but even with the detail of the rabbit’s fur breaking up the paint, there was more. He thought he saw a power line in the paint, or a windmill. Something with branches. A star, but he couldn’t tell if it was some old gas station from his grandfather’s day or an amusement park.
The paint shone like it was new. He touched it. It felt wet and cold, but his finger came away clean.
His knees hurt. He wanted to stand up and in pressing his hand against the wall, part of the image moved. He froze, watching.
The image was changing, drawing him in.
He looked around. The street was full of rain verging on ice. The small world inside the rabbit looked warm, but compared to this place, a freezer would be welcome.
The more he focused on the rabbit, the bigger it seemed. The eye, solid red paint, was big enough to crawl through. He pressed a hand against it and the wall seemed to collapse under the pressure, pulling him forward.
He let himself fall.
END
I actually thought it was a… ehm… bird. Farm bird. Know what I mean? ;)