Hard Round

Anna Ornata

Added 2025-06-17 16:00:14 +0000 UTC

UPDATE:: As I was uploading the images to instagram I started noticing a few little bits I wanted to tweak, so I've changed the contrast around a bit, darkened the left shoulder and added a soft bloom to her head. Also loved how it looked in mono so I've done a couple of variations on that. Which one's your favourite?

Hilariously I thought I made up the word "ornata" - I've got the file saved as "Anna Ornate" on my hard drive but it sounds stupid so I changed it to "ornata" only to discover the word means distinguished, honored. well equipped/endowed, richly adorned, ornate. Sooo, that works!

Been teasing this one for a while, it's taken a long time to pull together for various reasons, but it's been a really cool challenge.

It's based on a shoot by Marcus Mantino - https://www.instagram.com/marcusmantino and my friend Anna - https://www.instagram.com/little_b1989/

I just thought the shoot was epic and when I started sketching it, I thought it'd be cool to do an homage to the work of Hysteria Machine https://www.instagram.com/hysteriamachine/ - the 2 woman team behind Sleep Token's masks!

Initially the vibe was a lot more fire and brimstone, she was going to be a Goddess of Destruction and it was all going to be very METAL, but, I dunno as I got working on it properly that feeling kind of faded and I ended up getting inspired by the work of Dark Moon Media https://www.instagram.com/dark_moon_media/ a photographer I've been following for years.

It's kind of a mish mash of all sorts of stuff obviously, and I didn't really have a goal or a theme for it other than "this looks cool, do this" which is why I think it took so long to finish, but I think it's come out well in the end!