So this one is my latest. However, it is a paint over an old landcape I did a while ago. The reason being for this paintover, was to apply some corrections advised by some professional concept artists I met during the 2013 London conceptart.org workshop.
I placed both paintings next to each other to facilitate the comparision. At first glance they both have attractive color palettes, conserve the the same theme and placement for the main focal points.
The comments I received towards my former painting were the following ones: the city on top of the mountain wasn't reading enough as it did not contrast enough with the the rocks surrounding it. The very conal shape of the mountain on the right handside of the image had something very amatorish despite the realsitic rendering applied to it. Lastly, my foreground had nothing to offer and the overall illustration was lacking of significant storytelling. (well...after these coments that I couldn't think it was my best landscape painting any more!....)
Above, I illustrated with some red arrows, the flow of my compisition, how the viewer eyes should normally read the painting. In the first one, all arrows seem to point towards one single focal point. However, there should have been two and the main one intended should have been the city. Also since the biggest shape (the mountain) is positioned at the centre of the image (supposedly not ideal for a good composed image, see rule of thirds) , our eyes tend to rest in this area for a little while but the absence of additional elements of interest is leaving the viewer with a slight feeling of lassitude.
The new version is showing instead a circular flow of red arrows across the whole painting, making the viewer eyes travelling all around the four corners and center of the image. The introduction of new point of interests subordinate to the main focal ones promote this continuous movement almost like check points to the next focus of attention. A very strong component which made it easy to create the circular flow, was by blocking the right hand-side of the image with the cliff pointing at the city towards its left.
And finally, the story telling. I think that it is the most noticeable changes and improvements made between the two paintings. Story telling is bringing a purpose to the whole design and is the key for the viewer to become immersed in the painting. In my image, I could count five elements which contributed to the narrative of this illustration:
1. The city. Chosen for obvious reasons, is the most important point of the story as every other components relate to it. A city is a symbol of life, civilization and intelligence. Its location, size and architecture is raising curiosity towards the type of cvilization and beings living out there...
2. The traveller. Almost equally as important as the city, however, he is serving different purposes in the painting. One, He is the hero, the actor of the story. He is the meaning for the painting as it illustrates his "journey to monte Seagoel". Two,he serves the notion of scale: Since the viewer of the painting is (hopefully!) a human too, by seeing the figure in the bottom right corner, the viewer can relate to the size and distance between the details present in the environment.
3. The broken bridge and waterfalls. These little details were added to explain that the path which was leading to the short cut to the city cannot be used anymore. Unfortunately, the next access is across the bridge, several miles away. Waterfalls have been placed, in this case, to create movement and danger which adds to the epic scale of the piece.
4. The avatar statue. This is a symbol of civilization, a cult, a tribute, but to whom? (also repeated in element #3)
5. More waterfalls seemingly falling into infinite depth. causing more menace to the travel of our hero and supplementing more mysteries about this world.
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