Hirasawa Homage: Phonon Belt

Some of you may remember the WIP version of this, and may be thinking, "....but it's just the same!" And well, so it is, mostly. It's sat on my hard drive waiting to be worked on for a long time, and I've tweaked a couple things, but somehow it doesn't feel right to mess with it any more. Sure, I could develop it further, but I don't think I could make it any better. It has the right essential feel to it just as it is, and I think I would lose that of I tried to tighten it up. I really like the rawness of it as it is, and it says what I want it to already.

For those curious, this is loosely based on the song Phonon Belt by Susumu Hirasawa, who is my favorite musician in all the world. When I painted this, I had no idea what the song's lyrics meant (my Japanese is better than nonexistent, but not good enough to follow song lyrics), and instead painted what it felt like to me -- or rather a facet of it, since his work holds so much more than I can hope to ever pin down on a canvas. Since then I've been lucky enough to have found a translation, and naturally the meaning is pretty much as far removed from my guesses as possible.

But you know? I kinda think that's really cool, actually, in a psychological sort of way. I'm still glad I painted it and got it out of my system (so to speak), and I just wish I could offer a better tribute to such an amazing creator as Hirasawa is. Hopefully someday I will.