BUILDING THE SCENE

City

For the city’s architecture I took inspiration from the likes of Ancient Egypt and the Mayan civilisation. To bring in some fantastical elements, I adorned the main building with interesting shapes and littered the surrounding islands with these converging giant bridges.

Middle ground

Since this is a predominantly bright image, I needed a darker value to separate the foreground and background. The darkness itself doesn’t come from light per se, but instead the materials the light is interacting with. Water reflects light a lot more than grass and trees.

Grouped values

I also use my personal paintings to further develop skills for my professional career. I find it important to reach out to peers who are better than myself to critique and give feedback on my work. For this piece, I contacted a friend who is a better traditional painter, who provided me with invaluable feedback on my grouped values and lighting exposure.

Real-life reference

For the figure I asked my partner to be the model. Setting up and taking your own photos is almost always better than trying to find them on the internet, since you can dictate perspective, lighting and pose. It’s a good way to get perfect lighting and not have to necessarily theorise it and paint it.

Lighting a scene

For the curios on the merchant’s steed, I used images from a photo pack of a bazaar I purchased. It’s great to buy photo packs and keep them on hand since you never know when they will come in handy. I tried to balance some generic items with occult-like items to keep the mystery.

Water rendering

Water is one of my favourite elements to paint because you can really make the shapes flow. I usually start with photobashing as a base plate to get the intricate details you see. After I have a base I then usually go in with brushes to dial back detail and make interesting paint strokes.