Gone, Linda Bergkvist

Digital painting by Linda Bergkvist, Sweden. Download 1200x592 image here.

This is an old piece, never posted on Coolvibe. But it's one of those all-time greatest digital art paintings that we just had to post!

From the artists:
"I've no inclination to go into the story behind it right now... but the painting took me ages to complete. I had such a vision of how I wanted it – peaceful yet sad, because the character depicted is no longer alive... and it was hard. It was very hard. A friend of mine, Johan, posed for the references almost half a year ago, and I tried to finish the picture on many occasions without ever quite 'getting' it. I couldn't achieve the look I wanted no matter how hard I tried.
Then, a while ago, I sat down and finally I caught the feeling for it. I think it was in the skintone that made the difference. Or perhaps the textures. Something 'clicked', anyway, the way things do very rarely.
The piece is done about 50% in Photoshop, 50% in Painter... with a lot of different textures applied chiefly to the foliage to give it the right look. The skintone is painted almost exclusively in Photoshop as I still blend colours best there The face, some people tell me, resembles my own – but for once I wasn't using myself as the reference! Not fair!
My Dior perfume modelled for the bottle, so I guess I sort of snagged the general shape of that bottle from J'adore – if you've seen the bottle, you know what I mean. In the end, I think the hands and the bottle took by far the longest to make. After, I've refrained from painting any other detailed hands, hehe, I guess these just took the spirit out of me."