“Bear In Mind” Luke Chueh X Clutter Gallery

Via Clutter: ""Bear in Mind" is a group custom show, based around the DIY Edition of Luke Chueh's "Everybody Needs a lot of Head". The show opens on Saturday, May 14th with a reception from 6-9PM, and the contributions will remain on display until June 3rd, 2016." My contribution to the show is "Blue Shadows on the Trail" - a tiny camping diorama complete with flickering campfire. Before I arrived at my final piece the concept stage went through several (garbage) rough iterations which you can check out below! In the end, I'm happy with the direction the piece took.  
FACE OFF - first plan of attack. No matter what idea I was going with, that face was coming off.
Sketches that left the face in tact (mostly)
   
A mix of photoshop compositions
  I was fairly certain I was going to go the diorama route but wanted to explore that digitally before I started messing with the original resin too much.  I wanted a combination of textures and wanted to create a very personal, inner dream-like scene. For the first too, I was looking to have a gemstone cave and sleeping bear(s).  I liked the juxtaposition of the greenery and colorful, shiny gems.  I also liked the idea that a bear is always hibernating in his mind. Following that thread, I did another design with a sleeping bear in the woods and his head would also be filled with a sleeping bear in the woods, and so on. I really wanted to do this one but the scale was becoming a problem on the actual bear.  Proof that some things work better in theory.  I got so frustrated that I created that last one you see in that set of images. I wanted to try something COMPLETELY removed from my original concept. I absolutely HATED it. But it was a good thing to do because it solidified that I definitely was on the right path previously and so it put me back on track. I immediately created this very quick sketch you see below that became the final piece.  
  Eventually I dropped the external greenery all-together. I decided to put the camping  bears under a blanket of night sky as if they existed on a little planet of their own <3  
 
Blue Shadows on the Trail
   
Everybody likes options
   
Get dizzy
    Thanks for looking! xo