MEDIEVAL DRAMA

Paint a stunning stained glass environment

The beauty of digital art is that there are many approaches you can take to painting a scene, especially when it comes to enhancing ambience levels and creating atmosphere. The ease at which you’re able to draw perpendicular or parallel lines, just by holding down Shift, makes it possible to create complex perspective scenes relatively easily. This means you can concentrate on developing the feeling of the scene. There are many 3D programs you can use to create locations, but for an illustrator it’s vital to be familiar with the fundamentals of perspective. That said, painting a scene in a cathedral becomes much easier if you apply some tricks. In this workshop I’ll share some of mine.

I start by studying the subject. Thomas Becket was the archbishop of Canterbury and lord chancellor, and was murdered in Canterbury cathedral in 1170. This was the medieval period and the Gothic architecture style was commonplace throughout Europe. In 1174 the cathedral was damaged by fire, and some parts were replaced. For this reason I’ll only be using the cathedral as a general reference source for my environment.

There are a lot of medieval miniature models available that depict the murder of Thomas Becket. I like the idea of using those miniatures as references, posing Thomas in front of the altar as he’s about to be attacked from behind.