Steampunk Blimp
December 2023
A large scale canvas painting with a Steampunk vibe.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's . . . well, that's for you to decide.
My original intention was to make it a "blimp", but I've heard others call it a "submarine". Maybe it's a sky submarine.
Steampunk Blimp is the largest scale painting I've made to date. I used acrylic paint as the medium and painting was made as wall art for my living room, which is decked out in a Steampunk aesthetic.
From Just a Simple Sketch
The painting started out as purely a sketch in my daily sketchbook. It evolved into much more as a full blown large-scale painting.
Inspiration
Most of the inspiration behind this painting comes from my interest in Studio Ghibli animated films which illustrate large natural worlds with heavy mechanical machinery giving off a steampunk asthetic. Howl's Moving Castle and the Castle in the Sky have been the most impact on the painting. I also just have a big fascination for the Steampunk vibe. My living room is decked out in pulley lamps, a plague doctor planter, Gears that stick to my wall, and a number of other Steampunk items. I thought a large-scale Steampunk painting would pull the room together and what better to make it of than some giant mechanical machine?
Materials & Process
I used Sargent Art acrylic paints, expired to be exact, and a number of wide paint brushes of varying brands. I bought a giant canvas from Michaels and used an easel to hold the painting. A few times I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying process. I used a bunch of paint colors varying from browns, oranges, and yellows to blues and purples. I even added some gold paint as a final touch to add some accent colors that glisten in the sun at dawn and sunset.
I recorded the complete process of making this piece from two different angles. One angle was captured from my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the other on my Canon EOS 90D. I thought it would be cool seeing a timelapse of me making this painting. I spent two weekends on this painting in December of 2023 and it took about 15 hours. You can watch a timelapse GIF below of me creating the full painting.
