What We Believed In
"How can we go back, knowing now what we know? We sought a shining tower in a dark land, and found a ruin in a bright land. Nothing is what they told us it would be. Years of hopeful travel, propelled by the soothing words of ancestral voices... Did they know and lie? Have they seen the broken tower? Or are they ignorant, wishing better for us from their comfortable darkness? The paths that led us here have ended. Perhaps there was a lesson in the lie, intended or not. The world is larger than what we believed in, but so now are the possibilities..."
The finished painting!
After a few loose pencil sketches, I build the monochrome underpainting in photoshop.
The cave entrance is meant to be the silhouette of a tower, and the previous version didn't illustrate that well enough, so I changed it. It also now mirrors the distant tower more effectively.
Adding color was a fun process of pushing the greens over the top of the reds and oranges of the under-painting.
Tightening up the rendering and refining the design of the cave entrance.
Here I added luminescence to parts of the cave to help describe the space. It's overblown at this stage, but I'll tone it down as I head to the finish.
Adding some much needed atmosphere to the cave entrance and making lighting adjustments for the glowing areas.
Finishing touches.