WIP Wednesday | The Writers Triangle

What's up guys,

So, for the past 8 months or so I've been trying my hand at narrative vignettes and  ​landscape paintings. Drawing and designing landscapes has always been one my weakest points as an illustrator, so why not take an assignment and improve. In some ways, this is record of growth, so lets reflect on the process first.

All of the pieces are depictions of nature with a surreal or fantastical element/quality to compliment the subject and inform a greater wonder/mystery. Some pieces are straight up studies done to increase clarification for design choices for later works. I've been producing these pieces in batches of 4, exploring alternative painting and design techniques to find the best method for communicating my client's needs. That said, for the sake of brevity, I'll only provide one example for each of the 8 batches with a carousel for the images in order at the bottom. I've provided a title for each piece to identify a point of interest that I wanted to develop and build upon sequentially.

Narrative

Movement

Value

Reference

Whether through thoughtful repetitive placement of color,  directional cues created in perspective, or serializing the subject matter across sequential compositions, ​I thought it was necessary to build some form of consistency for each consecutive work. To keep things simple, I primarily focused on natural elements like trees and stones.

Focus

After reflecting on the passed several works, I felt they lacked the dynamism I was hoping to explore at the beginning of the project. I began using more gradients, perspective, and shape design tricks to pull more focus that would feel more rewarding upon viewing.

Since my background in illustration is mostly derived from character design and animation, I always try to infuse my compositions with some form of movement and gesture to keep the eye moving around the piece. By interlacing the aurora with the vertical 1 point perspective angle, I try to illicit a sense of vertigo from the viewer.

Technique

Even though I had started using scans of my original sketches, I felt my painting technique was still quite undefined and soft, where I desired more confident and deliberate strokes. So, I switched up my brushes, using a hard round brush and an analogous color palette. 

Until this point, I was using a fairly narrow value range to inform the elements arranged in the previous works(resulting in a flat graphic design language). However, in order to express more detail and shape complexity, I began referencing photographs taken in natural light settings. This helps inform atmospheric perspective; necessary to inform depth/distance and scale.

light & Shadow

Though I appreciated the vivid colors in the prior batch, the saturation was simply too high. At this point, I found it was time to seriously observe how ​light interacts with the different local colors and shapes sprinkled throughout the composition.

By continuing to use photo references, I became a little bit more cognizant of economizing space, designing shape, and rendering detail. I also began to use my sketches as the foundation of my paintings to build out structure, as opposed to simply painting straight away. Compared to the previous image, my value control in creating draw distance has improved.

Design

After reviewing my works, I saw certain patterns that offered opportunities to be enhanced by unique surrealistic design choices. By committing to a universal background plane, simplifying the color palette, extending the values, and adding mixed media we have arrived at a near finished concept.

I think after a few more refinements in line weight, vibrancy and variation of the mixed media elements I'll have created the best template going forward. Trees and stones aside, waterfalls and rivers are other subjects I'm looking forward to expressing in this design language. Perhaps enough assets can be created for legitimate world building. I've tried to stay away from manmade elements, but the introduction of ruins might pop up more frequently later if that is an idea worth pursuing. 

What do you guys think? What is one the most beautiful view of nature you've personally witnessed? Red striped mountains in the desert? A majestic waterfall in the rainforest? Black sand beaches at the base of a volcano? Leave your thoughts down below! Like and share if you care. Until next time, peace.