Cassie and Licorice remembrance Portrait, October 2025

 I digitally painted this as a remembrance for two dogs our family grew to love and adore. The dog in the foreground, Licorice, has passed to the great beyond. The background dog, Cassie, is still kicking.

Compositing reference images

I used two separate photos of the dogs, both taken in a similar setting. I then used AI image generation (XeroGen Forge) to create the green blanket Licorice is lying on.

Mount Pleasant Horses

Purchase a print of this at my art store

Title: Mount Pleasant Horses Touching the Sky

Dimensions: 18x22.2 inches at 300 DPI

Tools: Krita, Custom-made RGBa brushes that mimic the feel of oil paint.

Previsualizing the concept

During the Mount Pleasant Independence Day parade I snapped this photo of these horses mounted by local beauties:

After deliberating on whether to use this as is, for my reference image, I decided I didn't want to include the women as part of this piece. I liked the horse, but I also wanted to include clouds. In order to do this, I engaged in some photo compositing. Using another photo which included some puffy clouds and another photo that included a horizon and some far-off clouds with some mid-ground landscape. At one point I utilized Photoshops AI image generation tools to produce the lower portion of the horses. I fully rendered that generation into the painting. After reviewing other reference photos, I came to the full realization that the AI generation was completely flawed. I felt like a fool for taking as long as I did to come to this realization. Lesson learned, and I plan to never again us AI as a tool, except in the most minor cases. So, I finally did what I should have done in the beginning, and I used other references from horses in the same parade to produce the final rendering. I feel I ended up with a much more realistic and pleasing result. You can see the contrast in the progression video or animated GIF I produced, along with the painting. (See at the end of this post).

Haitian Woman and newborn

Early illustration from my newspaper days

I had been working at the Deseret News for about one year when I decided to try my hand at creating an artistic illustration using a pressure sensitive device. This wasn't entirely new to me, I had already owned a Logitech pen tablet for several years already and had produced several personal works with it. For this I decided to take an image which had already been published, draw a sketch on paper, scan the sketch into the computer, then render out a digital painting from the original reference.

Ultimately this was an attempt to show the management at Deseret News (In late 2010, right after a major layoff of a huge portion of the staff) that I had the chops to do illustration work. After creating this and showing it around, no one seemed too interested in the more traditional look. Which is fine. In the years that followed the Deseret News, like every other surviving Newspaper publication, would water down everything with their physical content. Currently you can subscribe to the, vastly reduced newspaper, and have it delivered in your mailbox. But about 99% of us just hit the internet on our mobile devices.

Stephanie Memorial Illustration

Medium: Digital

Tools: krita, using custom digital brushes

Duration: Approximately 10 hrs, over 5 sessions

On February 12, 2025 my cousin Stephanie Fryer passed due to a combination of diabetes and illness. Shortly after her passing my wife suggested I create a digital portrait to memorialize her and her life.

As has been the case with most of my illustrative work from the past 2 years I sought to use digital techniques in the most traditional way possible.

From this I advanced my skills as an artist and illustrator. I also learned how much of her mother Ellen she had within her. Studying every detail of her face, as I worked, helped me to see that clearer than ever. As is the case with all of the daughters of God, she was beautiful inside and out. I look forward to getting to know her better in the next life 

Christmas Newsletter Illustration, 2024

Deciding on what exactly to do this year proved a difficult decision for me. In years gone by the imagery flowed with greater ease, or I already had an image waiting in the wings. Starting around Thanksgiving, after mulling it over for a couple weeks, or so, I finally decided on sharing something that goes well beyond the Christian mainstream. A concept that is alluded to briefly in the Bible, that has an expanded meaning due in no small part to the Book of Mormon and modern prophetic revelation. This Christ centered idea of the Tree of Life is deeply meaningful to me and my family. Every Christmas, not only do I share the story of the nativity, but I also include Nephi's vision of the Tree of Life and its meaning. The ideas engendered in his vision of our Lord and the Tree have become inseparably welded into my heart and mind whenever I see a Christmas tree. For me the Christmas tree is a symbolic representation of the Tree of Life pointing us to God through the living Messiah, even Jesus Christ.

The first part of this post will be about the process and tools I used to create the illustration. If you are willing to stick around, the second half will be a more in-depth explanation of the meaning behind the illustration.

An Epic Play Mat

At the beginning of October my youngest son approached me with a task of creating an illustration for a playmat. Essentially this is like a mouse pad, only larger. It will be rolled up, then unrolled, when he is ready to do some serious card gaming.

I accepted the challenge. Before I even began, he came up with a mood board and instructions for the playmat. I love how he used a little typographic hierarchy to tell me what is most important about the illustration. 

Together we figured out I needed to produce an illustration 24 inches wide by 14 inches deep. 

With that, I dove into creating this. To expedite the speed in which this would be produced, I chose to use a combination of AI image generation, compositing techniques, using Affinity Photo, and digital illustration where needed.

Bison Study Aug 2024

Final Digital painting by Aaron Thorup. Purchase a Print.

 

I started this particular study sometime last year. A good friend gave me an art book called Painting Wildlife TEXTURES Step by Step, by Rod Lawrence. This book highlighted using a technique of gradually layering the paint to build up the details. The idea of applying the same techniques to a digital painting intrigued me.