I didn't rely heavily on photo references this time around although I have come to terms with the legitimacy of the method, the reason I didn't use it too much this time is that I felt that I could just paint the camp easier without looking for the best reference, I did however use a photograph as a foundation for the environment, although it was fairly heavily modified to create the tone and composition that I wanted.
Sample
I created a sketch before starting this painting or even finding the above photo so I already had an idea of the composition I was going for so I had to change a number of things: first and most noticeably I change the resolution significantly and my painting is more 'widescreen' as I wanted to capture a certain sense of a 'landscape' that I achieved in my first photo bash and had since neglected. I also ended up changing the path of the river, in the photo graph it bends to the left in the middle of the image which I felt restricted the sense of scale and also harmed the composition with the camp (being my focus) on the right. So I added in the river to run into the mountains and lead the the composition more naturally like that where it would curve around the mountains leading the eyes back to the camp.
I used another tower building way in the foreground in order to add a sense of scale and also add context to the painting as previously everything was small and in the distance. The Bonobo perched on his doorway adds a reference for scale for the similarly perched bonobo on the doorway of the distant tower which I felt would otherwise be unidentifiable. I also used this to add further to the composition and lead attention back to the main camp and add further sense of scale and vastness to the landscape.
sketch
Despite being a culmination of my previous design work this painting still serves a purpose as concept art, I introduced an idea of smaller pyramidic buildings surrounding the main tower, as I felt that the tower alone wouldn't be a convincing camp. For the first time really I placed the bonobos in the environment. I also toyed around with that old idea of the white scrawling graffiti that I added earlier as a 'decoration' on the buildings with the same purpose of warning and defining territory. Then I added white paint around the doors too to fit aesthetically with that and since they looked like boring 'slits' before which is essentially what I wanted them to be but it lacked character.
