Hell

First post of 2016, and my first completed piece of personal work for the year (and for a while)! As detailed in a previous blog post, this digital painting was a reboot of some work I created when I was 10 and is 1 'skyland' of many that make up a fictitious world called "Wacky World."

As seen in this blog post, I have 3 more line drawings of skylands that are ready to paint up and I'm quite excited to get started on them.

Here are some close ups of the details that I worked into my Hell Skyland:

Details of the tower by the volcano on the right. The towers in this piece were very much inspired by the visionary painter Zdzisław Beksiński. Originally, the towers were spiky and quite reminiscent of what you'd probably see in Peter Jackson's take on Mordor. These towers, with their flatter sides, seem more obvious and stark against the rest of the landscape, making them feel a little more deliberate.

Some more towers. It was the taller one which made me settle on the colour of the grass in the end (originally flipping between a blood red or lush green). The faint, mouldly look was what worked for me and this made me set the rest of the foliage to a similar colour, bringing the organic matter into a more harmonious look.

Designing the new Devil started life in my sketchbook. After going on a big monster sketching bender (of which I will share more about that in a later blog post), I reviewed what I had done to see if any of the many monsters would work as the new design. This one really stuck out to me and so I developed it a little more.

Here are 6 iterations based off of the first little rough. Here I was trying to make it more Devil like, whilst trying to maintain a demonesq feel at the same time. Elements from these 6 were taken to the final design. What I felt worked here was how his mouth could curve up at the sides to form a sly, cheeky smile we all know the Devil to have.

The final design that made it into the painting. Although you can't clearly see it here, this guy has some killer side burns and a pointy arrow tip to his tail.

Happy New Year folks! I hope its a productive one for you all.

Lloyd