Background
This artwork was created in 2017 as personal project to see how far I could push details. I found the bottleneck; my computer hardware. The skull itself was a more detailed version of a much simpler avatar I made for free for someone. It seemed like a fun challenge to go ham with the illustration, and so I did. Later the frame was created around it.
The Drawing
It was originally drawn in vector using Illustrator, with a Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet. The shading uses a combination of hatching and stippling. Every little dot/detail was drawn by hand, except for the large shading area inside the frame, behind the skull. This was created using a multiple hacks in Illustrator, with several layered generated gradients of stippling.
The "wallpaper" was also made custom for this artwork, as with everything else.
With artworks like these I prefer to make them so they can go on any background. This means I cannot use any background color myself to block out content. This was especially a challenge when the file was large and heavy to work with, and had a vast amount of small details that needed to be included inside masks.
My first NFT
This artwork is my first NFT on Solana, and second NFT ever minted—the first being a different artwork that uses the skull itself for a halloween portrait created shortly before, on OpenSea.
I am not yet too familiar with NFT's, nor do I have any large communities or a following of people for myself or my artworks. I mostly keep to myself and don't show much of my works. From what I read people seek value for their NFT. Value can be driven by a large community with the same desire for the works, which gives a high demand, which drives up value.
Adding value
As mentioned above, high demand drives up value. I have no such thing, so instead I want to try to attach some physical value to the work. In my daily life I work in a photography studio as a graphic designer, a studio certified with Epson's Digigraphie and have ambassador for Canson. I have access to printers, papers, and have connections with a large printlab/product manufacturer, and knowledge how to use it.
Using these as my tools I hope to increase the value people get from my NFT's that way, so even in the event that the NFT's themselves aren't worth as much, you at least still got something from it.
Free Poster & certificate with purchase
To add value, I will be providing a printed poster in the size 60×80 cm, and then sign it by hand with my pencil. Along with the poster, I will be providing a small certificate, where the purchase date, amount, and my signature is written on it. The certificate will also have the artworks title initials foiled in gold on it. So for this artwork, it would be "St".
I plan on shipping the artwork for free, granted I have the extra money on hand to do so. Shipping may be a problem depending on where the buyer is located though, so in the event that shipping is not possible, they will at least be provided a printable PDF file for the poster. Anywhere inside Scandinavia will be very easy, Europe easy, Canada/USA might be more tricky but do-able, rest of the world is unknown territory to me.
