Mars Progress

A while ago I posted an in progress shot of a Mars landscape I was working on. After abandoning the image for a couple months, I revisited yesterday and made a decent amount of progress on it. The colors were looking good, but the textures were a bit muddy, so I tried out using photo textures for the first time and was really happy with the result.  I still want to add in some sort of narrative, like a spaceship or some sort of mars colony, but feel like I should have planned for that from the beginning. As is I like it.

Mars

Just started another painting, trying to do a cool shot of the surface of mars. I skipped the sketching stage and went straight in by blocking in the big shapes with simple values, then throwing on the color and texture. I think the piece still has a ways to go (conceptually and finish-wise), but once it's done I think I'll have something worth selling as a print.

Finished Landscape

 I finished my painting from yesterday. I decided to throw in some traveler and his pet moose making their way up the mountain. I was really happy with how it turned out, and decided to reformat it a bit so I could use it as a facebook cover photo, and I like the cover photo version better than the original :/

This probably means I need to spend more time messing around in the initial thumbnail stage to make sure the composition is worked out before I go in and start rendering.

New Landscape

Started a new painting today! I mostly focused on color, which I'm pretty happy with. I'm starting to understand why painters can get really excited about selective use of greys.

Composition-wise it could use some work, the original sketch had a building half-way up the hill-thing, but I couldn't get it to look right. When I have trouble with something in a painting, I can never figure out if it means I should try harder or back up and try to think of something else, so we'll see what I do after a night's sleep.