Mountain King

[Severian]

Hey all,

Here's a sketch I've been working on. The subject is a scene from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, where the protagonist comes across a mountain carved into the likeness of an ancient king. This is my first attempt at a digital painting, so any comments would be helpful. I'm not too happy about the perspective, a bit too static, so maybe I'll redo it from a more dramatic angle. Anyway, comments/critiques appreciated.

http://www.memeticbomb.com/art/mountainking.jpg

Cheers,
Severian

[mos667]

Hey I like the start of this. Love the fog and the mountains. Very nicely done. Something I think you could fix up thuogh would be to add some more lights to it. If you put the sun behind the mountain king guy, fairly low, i think that you could pull off a GREAT affect. You could make it look like midmorning too, with dew on the grass (the grass looks a little plain now). Also, you could use the rays from the sun to emphasize the black figure on the left.
Something you may want to think about doing is making the hills closer to the figure more saturated, so you could make the hills look like they go back. Now it looks as if the black figure is looking at a painting.
You may also want to add some sort of thing to the king to make him look like he's a king. Right now it just sort of makes him look like an old man enjoying some television.

Don't get me wrong, I love the piece ;)

mos.

P.S. Is that book any good? :)

[Severian]

Thanks for the tips, especially about the lighting. I was thinking it looked pretty flat, and that's probably it.

As for the saturation in the hills, I was goin for a look where he's up high on a neighboring mountian, and the perspective doesn't allow us to see anything but the valley floor and mountains. Guess that doesn't come off so great, huh? :)

And yes, the book is very good. It's actually divided up into four seperate books and chronicles the journey of a torturer. Probably the best science fiction novel I've read to date. Gene Wolfe is an amazing author.

Severian

[Severian]

Here's a quick update with some new lighting and a bit more work on the foreground hills. Still working on getting all the lines right, and the sky needs some serious work, but this'll do until tomorrow I guess.

http://www.memeticbomb.com/art/mountainking2.jpg

Cheers,
Severian

[mos667]

Hey! That looks excellent. Keep up with that :D. Looks like its going to turn out pretty well.
You may want to consider adding something to his face though, something shiney, to make it stand out more. Once you have all the lighting in, it will definately take away the details you put in for the face, sorta making it more like a silhouette than anything else. Think ahead ;)

mos.

[0kelvin]

One thing about the updated version. I think putting the sun directly behind him and giving him that halo makes him look less like a statue carved in the mountain and more like an apparition of some kind. It seems to come across as the guy on the hill having a vision of God rather than seeing a statue.

Although, I'm not sure of your intentions. Giving the statue a sense of life and power might be what you're going for.

But still, very nice painting. I quite like it and look forward to seeing what you do with it.



0kelvin

[Christopher]

the 2nd image is a great improvement. i just saw the 1st one, and was going to suggest adding more detail to the areas in the foreground.

perspective isn't too flat, if you're concentrating on the figure. however the mountain does look a little flat compared to the figure, as if they're not in the same plane. however, the added lighting in the 2nd image helped alot, esp. to making it appear to take up more space.

[nikia]

I think if you put more sunlight on the outside edges of the mountain and make the shadows really dark, you'll bring it off fine. I've been on top the mountains when the sun is coming up in the morning, and you can literally see the sun chasing the night shadows down the mountain. So the top of the mountain would be fairly light with varying shades of grey in front, gold highlights on the edges, and the lower part would be dark grey to black with light grey highlights on the ridges. Hope this helps.

[galenb]

Oh no! The images are gone. I didn't get to see what you came up with. Just finished the new sun series myself. I love Gene Wolfe!

-=GB=-