Environment 2

This concept work of environmental piece was rather fascinating to begin with due to its powerful scene its showing thus I started working on this piece, even though in the concept work, the colour I've put it in was just didn't match up.

Concept piece.

Beginning to form a solid piece by putting more details and adding different colours. At this stage, texturing isn't necessary compare to getting the position/perspective view of the piece.

This was just an experiment how the painting could turn out. Quite liking the peculiar textures on the building/castle and the sunlight in the background.

Final version of the painting. I had to remove the tree on the top left by listening other artists opinion that it needs to be removed (it just didn't fit the painting and doesn't show the castle as a main part, more like tree + castle, giving people confusion whether they should concentrate on castle more or including the tree as well).

Also, environment painting I did before, 'Dragon Lair', one of the great thing I have learned was the adjustment of lighting. By putting sunlight on top right, it suddenly gave life of this painting dramatically compare to the sprints of this painting I did earlier.

Environment 1

Another concept work which I personally chose to work even further to give more dynamic feeling to it. Also, it has been a while since I have painted environmental piece (last semester, I was concentrating about designing characters rather than environment).

First of all, just a quick black and white style of painting shows how this piece will turn out, what kind of colour would suit the best. Anyway, theme I choose for this was dragon lair, hoping putting huge dragon head would represent the entrance towards to the dragon.

Now, I have skipped quite a bit but it shows a lot more by putting colour, mainly focusing on blue and dark navy blue/dark grey and putting bit of texture is a bonus to give more compelling sense. Also, by turning the painting horizontally, painting seems to be different (another trick to see if the painting shows the right colour [where the light hits the object, it should be lighter which means the other side will be darker])

Adding bit more textures and colour but somehow, something is missing, something important. Maybe its the dragon head is a bit too flat (not 3D looking enough).

Just an experiment by putting actual dragon behind the environment.

Completely changing the position of the painting (as I have said before, the dragon head in top right was just didn't look powerful enough.) Maybe the dragon head wasn't in the right position and that lair was suppose to be the main part of this painting and by changing it like this, its more impressive and fearful. Now, all it needs it few more changes in the background and solid texturing.

In these 3 pieces of painting, top 2 are the progression by adding more textures and putting light and adjusting the layer to make it look more natural. The last piece is the final version of this painting and finally, it seems that the dragon head/lair is at the stage where its fearsome and the it has the right amount of textures to give dynamic feeling of the entire painting.

Concept Environment paintings 5

Again, going for different theme but this time, a painting with bit more sci-fi and fantasy was what I had in my mind and just gave it a shot. Turns out the concept itself wasn't so bad and just kept continuing with it.

It had a good starting point - perspective view was on set (view from mid-bottom rock going towards to the castle) and how the castle standout to give more palpable feeling to it.

Feedback

When I have received my feedback from tutors, it seemed there were a lot of mistakes which I needed to change.
 First of all, there weren't much progress with character at that time which I couldn't present it to tutors except form the painting for the mixture of character and environment. The colour was in the right (maybe a little bit more dynamic colour and lighting would put more life into it) place but maybe the proportion of the dragon wasn't in the right place.
 Secondly, I started with environment paintings and one of the concept I was working on was rather unique and wanted to carry along. That painting is 'Dragon Lair', highly focused on using blue and dark/grey/white colour. However, the composition of the painting was rather odd, as if the head of the dragon is not the centre point when it should be the main focus of the painting. It needed to change dramatically.

Concept Environment paintings 4

Another concept which I genuinely enjoyed painting and had a potential of turning into one of my grand piece but something was off balance in this painting.

Also, trying to go for Japanese style of painting might have been useful, especially the painting which I have used it as a main idea, 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' painted by Katsushika Hokusai, was a significant help but maybe its because of these intense white wave textures and the colour of the sea was upsetting the whole image itself.