Eruption of the Old Kingdom

Hello everyone! It sure has been a long time since I did any writing on my blog. Be that as it may, I have for you a piece from the medieval realm of the Old Kingdom. A forgotten battlefield worn by war and by time. The ground itself is releasing its fury into the sky and bellowing the fires of conquest back into the sky above.

About the Piece

How in the world did I come up with an exploding battleground you ask? Well I have been wanting to do a study on battlegrounds that have been forgotten in time along with some environmental concepts of the same. Worlds that have been torn asunder and left behind to be claimed by time. I recently watched Thor Ragnarok and was inspired by all of the mayhem to make a place of my own that was meant to be doomed.

Tutorial

This is the part of my blog posts where I like to discuss some of the techniques used in the design. This was created using Clip Studio Paint and I used a 600 x 600 dpi canvas. I normally change the color of the background to grey before I start but this time I left it white. By the way, I set my brushes to 300 dpi from the start. This way I don’t have any strange nuances created by a 72 dpi drawing. The pen strokes just don’t look the way they are supposed to.

The Line Drawing

The line drawing was kept simple and flowing to allow enough space for all of the elements that I wanted to include without overcrowding the scene. See how I vary my line widths? The lines closer to the camera are thicker that the ones farther away. Depth is achieved this way by trying not to make all of your lines the same. On another note, I used many of these lines as containers for my flat colors. It is much easier to select and fill than to just paint all over everything.

Colors

See how the mountain lines are gone? I put them there at first to shape them and add the fills in. Once I got beyond that point, I erased them from the inking layer. This makes the mountains look more a part of the natural scene without looking drawn in. I removed the reds in this layer so you can see the mountains easier. I used everything from pencils to water color brushes to add color and highlights. The cloud shapes were sketched in early on and I used texture brushes to flesh them out. I used air brush tools continuously to highlight and shade and blend and repeated the process continuously.

Texture

If you look closely at the hand, there is a lot of stuff going on. I varied my colors a lot here to make the look of a decomposed hand seem more realistic. The trees in the distance make for a nice effect. Additionally, if you look close, I added metal defects on the bracelet.

Summary

That is all for tonight. If I left some things out that you may want to know more of, please ask. I am always happy to help everyone out. Also check out my book. You can find it here. Amazon Prime holders can get it for free. It is available in hard copy and E-book format. The book has a lot of these types of tutorials designed to help you come up with design ideas.

If you enjoyed this tutorial, maybe you’ll like the one I did during the fall. I also did an interesting autumn piece earlier this year as well. Also check out Pilgrim in the Woods. You will find some really cool tips and tricks that I used to create it. I always on the prowl to collect suggestions and comments from everyone. Let me know what you think.