Master Studies

After watching some of Noah Bradley's environment tutorials I picked up that he recommended studying the masters to improve your environment art. Above is my first attempt at this, it's a painting by Thomas Moran, overall I think I captured the original pretty well, obviously it's not a like for like replica but it's helped me get a better handle on atmosphere and mood. The range of colours in his colour palette is crazy! Felt like I was colour picking like a mad man, anyway I highly recommend anyone interested in environment art to give one of these a go, you would be surprised how much you learn. Till next time!

A link to the Noah Bradley Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q

Composition Is Key!

 

If you've ever frequented this blog then you probably know I have a little bit of an aversion to environments, well recently I've been tackling that problem head on! The first thing I've been focussing on has been composition, as without it your painting can lack focus, after some great feedback from a university friend, I realised that lighting can be used to really push were you want the viewer to look, combine that with the usual character design tricks of using high contrast areas and high detail areas you begin to be able to move the viewer around your painting much more effectively.

 

Above are a bunch of thumbnails for two new environments, "The anomaly" and "The frost gates", the anomaly is actually much further along now but I can't be spoiling you guys too much now can I?? till next time! 

It's been a while............

 

So it's been a while and I do apologise but I have been a very busy bee lately! 

The guy above is one such thing that's been keeping me busy. He is a finished "Children Of Odin" acolyte, these mystical seers keep watch over the ravens and commune with the Gods or so they would have there people believe, in all reality they are little more that noble men taking advantage of the current situation.

 

Design wise I wanted something a lot more civilised looking than the designs I have been creating for my elves, less bone and fur, more silks and armour. With the armour I still didn't want to have them overly armoured because that's going to be the main feature of the nord race, so I wanted to create something more visually appealing, maybe less about defence and more a show of position. You might also notice that I have actually put some colour on this piece! I felt like the black and white wasn't doing the character justice and in all honesty, I was getting a bit bored painting in greyscale, I hope you guys like him and I will try and get a new update sooner rather than later. Till next time.