The Id has Escaped

I'm really not sure about this image. Part of me says its unusual and works well, and part of me is squeamish about it.

This is an experiment but also a final illustration I was hoping to put in a contest.

Background info:
Started life as an 11"x14" pen and ink life drawing of a hanging sculpture in the Columbus main library. The ink drawing was scanned in. I made an abstract watercolor painting and scanned that in too, then made a challenge of only coloring the line art with pieces of my watercolor painting cut out and brought in, each on their own layer.

The creature is an escaped id (like in Freud's theory of the psyche), in the form of a malicious (and hopefully primitive-looking) creature. The round, cracked shells are the not-always-effective ego (each one encapsulating an id creature) and the architecture surrounding is the super-ego. The creature is trying to pry open the other ego shells. Not that I'm expecting viewers to get what's going on-- my main objective is for it to look cool...

I'm far from a psychology major (took one psych 101 course two summers ago). But I was sort of thinking of how old renaissance masters would use the geometric lines and shapes of architecture to represent thought, reason, order, purpose, and morality in their paintings.

In terms of religious thought, this transcends the rest because it represents morality and ultimate purpose, just like a room sort of transcends whats in it.

Of course, this concept was built around the existing life drawing, so perhaps its just my attempt to fabricate some meaning into the picture so it doesn't feel like wasted hours.

Oh, and the layered file is a whopping 413 megabytes! 0_o





By the way, I hate having to choose whether this is digital or traditional. I think I spent equal time with both the pen and the computer... wish they had some kind of "mixed" option!