ARISE

From The Art of Michael Whelan: This piece was commissioned by a record company for an album cover, Arise, by Sepultura. It was a chance to experiment and have fun, which is what I did. After completing a small stack of tone renderings of textures and distorted faces, I photocopied them, cut them out, and recombined them. I then had the assemblage photographed, and a sepia-toned print was made of it in the appropriate dimensions. using the sepia photoprint as my "underpainting," I finished the painting in my regular acrylic paints. It was an enjoyable excursion into strange territory for me.