This painting depicts comedic magician (and illusionist) Robert Strong. It started life being created 100% using the Procreate app on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil as an entry in their annual Illusion-themed Art Prize contest (which it wasn’t selected for). Then I continued in Corel Painter 2021 on a MacBook Pro with a Wacom Intuos Pro pen tablet to the state you see it shown here, which I call the “final” state…for the moment… As Leonardo da Vinci famously said: “art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Now it’s test-time! See how many illusions and historical references you can find embedded and hidden away in this artwork. I counted at least 18.
You may get a few clues if you carefully watch this time-lapse replay video showing the Procreate portion of the creative process (this video is also an Augmented Reality overlay on the image which you can view with the AR app Artivive):
Print delivered to The Illusionist himself!
(animated GIF photos: Peggy G)