focussed painting

I have decided to take the photo sampling method a little further as I feel like it's the method that will give me the best work for now.

 In the last painting it was a bit unguided, I didn't necessarily have a vision other than placing some building ruins into a highlands setting*, and it does the job but it doesn't really tell a story.

*I have been always been looking for pictures of 'the highlands' when I look for reference for the environment, I'm not really sure why but it just feels right to me, I think the atmosphere is perfect for capturing the Dark Souls aesthetic and it's also very fresh and natural which is one of the important things for my setting.

I decided to take a more focussed attempt this time, I wanted to take a similar environment but this time zoom into a specific area and try and give a bit more of a context this time; I would be taking the idea of the bonobos using the ruins as a place to live.

Samples

I took a landscape photograph (one of the same ones I used last time) and place a roughly cropped segment from a photograph of a church, then I adjusted the colour using the colour balance tool in photoshop to ground it in the environment, I wasn't too careful with losing edges as I intended to use the photo sample purely for colour/value and texture.

I painted over the whole thing to add consistent and dramatic lighting and to make the building the decayed and incorporated into the environment.

finally I added some finishing details (albeit still rough) to the painting and adjusted the colours and levels for dramatic purposes and I still have the Dark Souls aesthetic in mind as inspiration. I added a figure into the scene which is an early idea for what the bonobo tribesmen might look like as a size reference and also context for the painting, as well as adding some territorial/warning graffiti onto the church exterior to illustrate how it is lived in by the bonobos.

I wanted to also reflect on how I feel about photo sampling now. I was initially very against the idea but I think that is my pride getting in the way, I'm annoyed with myself that I don't have the skills yet to create a painting like this without 'cheating'. However I am beginning to understand the value of photo sampling as simply a very useful technique for getting an idea from your mind to the canvas and there is actually a lot of freedom as long as I use the reference sparingly and don't try to rely on it too much, I may continue to just use this technique from this point onward.

I think I have established the overall aesthetic of the game to a satisfactory extent now: I have a setting and I'm happy with how the old human buildings fit in with the new world environment so now I would like to focus in on how the bonobo camps would look and create a final painting using photo sampling based on concepts from now, as I am basing this environment on the highlands I may look at reference from Celtic tribal settlements.