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.
Pilgrim in the Woods visiting a Thanksgiving Dinner near you.
Pilgrim in the woods is visiting a Thanksgiving dinner near you. Halloween is over but are all the spooks really gone? The ghosts aren’t screeching and the werewolves aren’t yelping but the woods is not empty of danger.
The Pilgrim
How is it this pilgrim is here and what does he want? It’s been many long years since the Puritans first came to America and shared the first Thanksgiving. Was someone left behind or is this would be wanderer plagued with unfinished business? Time will tell when the truth is finally uncovered. I could write horror stories all year round. My goal this year is to come up with a horror idea that ties in with every major holiday. I don’t know if I will ever write a full story or not but ideas are where more ideas come from. Let me know if you have any special requests out there.
About this Design
I hope you are all enjoying my latest design. Please let me know what you think by commenting on this post or dropping a note through a form.
I used 13 different layers to design this scene. I didn’t start with a pencil sketch. In fact, I clicked on the oil paint tool and went right to work painting out the scene. The scene background was painted with the oil paint flat brush tool. The digital oils provided a nice blending affect to build the background just like playing with Play dough. I alternated shades and used the blending tool as well to get the lighting effect I wanted.
Tips and Tricks
Below are some screenshots of layers that I used. The first one is a 33% opacity layer that I drew the trees on in the distance along with some shrubs. I used a very light brown within the pallet that I was working with. This effect created some of the white noise that comes with designing wooded areas. A G-Pent was all I needed to design the trees. A darker bleed tool brush was used for the shrubs. I like to keep things murky and then pull the details out.
Background
This next section is of just the trees themselves. See how they are on their own layer? I can manipulate the depth of the piece easier this way and control the highlights and shadows without creating digital mud. Using the selection tool helps to keep the overspray from going out of control. I still have a little. Through color discipline practice, it becomes easier to paint in this fashion. The airbrush highlight and shadow tools create nice textures on the tree. I selected where the light was coming from and then I just stayed consistent until I got the trees completed. Additional texture was created by using a darker pencil to enhance the bark.
Foreground Trees
As I go over each part of the tree, I can slowly pull out the natural texture of the tree along with other minor details such as the roots and growth defects in the tree that make it look more interesting.
I used the ink pen tool to design the Pilgrim and then I sketched out lightly what I wanted and then filled it in. I already knew that I was going to use a silhouette so I didn’t worry about every detail with the character. Extra grass created the mired affect. The woodlands known to be wet.
The Pilgrim Design
I used the polygon line tool to detail the parts of his outfit that I felt viewers would need to see to understand he is a pilgrim. I used Google to find a some good ideas for what I wanted the pilgrim to look like. Again, not a lot of serious detail required. Using my G-Pen with white pigment, I colored in some wrinkles and added some buttons. If I did my job well enough, you can tell that it’s a pilgrim.
Some additional details I added were the sun beams shining through. The line tool is awesome to get this detail. I changed the opacity on the beams so they look more transparent and played around with the color. True yellow just wasn’t covering it.
I designed the bridge with just blocks of grey matter that I blended together. I used references for this too because I just couldn’t picture the bridge the way I wanted in my head alone.
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.