Here’s a little peek at the process behind my latest Patreon painting, “Arrival”. Remember, if you haven’t yet, you can always upgrade your tier to get access to the PSD download, time lapse video, and fully narrated tutorial videos for this piece.
So let’s start with step one: the sketch.
This is when the overall composition is mapped out, and I start brainstorming different elements. Here I’ve made use of what I call “perspective shapes” which both serve to guide the eye to the focal area and also increase the depth of the landscape.
Next, I fill in the sketch with some values. This is the most important element of the composition—values can make or break a painting. Here, I’ve tried to create more contrast around the most important elements, though I do end up adjusting the values later on to bring more balance to the piece and highlight distant elements more strongly.
Then it’s time to introduce some color. I try to start with a high degree of saturation and variety at the beginning of the painting, so I can easily pick colors from the canvas and tone them down later if I need to.
Towards the end of the painting phase, I’ve simplified a lot of my textures and shapes, and changed up my focal area to increase depth and interest. I’ve removed some of the direct lighting from the left side of the midground to help the fortress pop even more (and, as you’ll see next, I end up eliminating that entirely in the final pass).
2-3 years later (yes, believe it or not, this stayed in an unfinished state for quite awhile before I returned to wrap it up).
I started with some photo-texturing and mixed that with some hand-detailing to bring the piece to a finished state. I also increased the scale in the foreground a bit and added in some other characters to modify the story a bit and make better use of the space. (Hint: there was a lot of copy-pasting involved here).
That’s it for this post, but of course there’s so much more to check out in the full time lapse and narrated tutorial videos, so make sure you check those out or upgrade to see them!
Cheers,
Eben