[img][800:565]http://th03.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2012/135/d/7/there_will_come_soft_rain_by_moknin-d4ztzg5.jpg[/img]
There Will Come Soft Rain
This artwork was inspired by Sophia Light's "Winding Down", a short story in the SCP Foundation universe. Before reading it, It is recommended to read this first for more background info
Set on a dying world which was destroyed by a virus that turn organisms into clockwork machines, this illustration took the scene where Agent Ketterson, the mostly-converted protagonist, hug his fiancee/ wife who was reduced into an automated gardener. In this succumbing last settlement in the empty Siberian tundra, she sings Sara Teasdale's poem "There will come soft rain"
Quote:
'There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.'
Originally made on a pencil draft, it was quickly abandoned as more and more deviations were made. For example, both the face and the hair were changed TWICE, cos the one in the draft just look masculine:) I actually went over-detailed on the guts due to the extreme zoom-in I used, which would be covered by the blizzard
Without references from lines drawing, it would take a much longer time without the tablet borrowed by Owen Li. Thanks Owen:) Kinda go addicted with it, now I could no longer paint with mouse! (the face and the girl's guts were done by mouse)
I was going to put on some half-mechanized plants to hint on the virus, or the fully converted sparrow featured in both the story and poem. But eventually I just decided to kjeep it simple. Just THIS had taken me long enough:(
Quote:
'The Greenhouse, soft and vibrant, went silent; until Marie bent over the dirt once again.
The tears were gone, in an endless loop.
The world outside was wide and cold.
“There will come soft rains, and the smell of the ground…” '