I picked the image because I wanted to do something from one of my favorite pieces of media, Metal Gear Solid. The image already was striking (and frankly, probably looks better than its painted brother), but at the time I thought it might be a good exercise to see if I could keep some of the same elements as the original and create just as striking a painted version.

Contrast: The contrast was more or less already built into the original image, but I had to decide what I wanted to be more clear than the rest of the image, as a different form of contrast. Big Boss (the character seen), is obviously the center point, so he needed to more clear than the rest of the image, especially in the face area. I also made sure that the gun and the patch were a little more clear than their surroundings. From there, the background is a little hard to make out, but that is intentional. The light pollution from the camp below and the night sky made for an interesting background, even when “blurred” to look like a painting.

Alignment: Again, the image already had aligned itself well. I further took those into consideration when “painting”, especially with the sky… the original image shows it is raining. I found that if I moved the brush in the direction of the rain, it gave a striking result.

Proximity: The brush had several settings to determine the size of the “paint blobs”, and how close together they were. I also thought it wise to group the most detailed parts of the image as clear as possible, as much as I wanted the American flag down in the base shown, it distracted the gaze too much away from the face and the gun.