Every painting starts with an idea, and with this one I got a call for the cover of the Dragon's Hoard by Flaming Crab Games. I had a while to work on it and get the idea, and even started a separate painting that didn't flesh out to what I wanted to achieve. I ask questions like, "should it be a battle scene with a dragon? Should I focus on the treasure? Should it be more action, or more peace after the fact?" There were a lot of neat ideas, from a view of adventurers picking up new gear, to the dead serpent fuming on the ground.
So I start exploring those ideas with these abstract thumbnails in 2 and 4 tone designs until I get something that I think flows well and says what I want it to. Sometimes these thumbnails are just lines and other times they are as detailed as full drawings, but it always comes down to what I want to achieve.
As great as all of these ideas were, FCG and I thought this was the strongest piece for the cover. This was the second attempt at the piece and on this run I really knew almost exactly what I wanted, (which would come back to bite me later!) It's strong and simple at the same time, plus I thought that the armor would offer a good contrast to focus on, and the helmet would be an interesting object to recognize as opposed to a face.
So I both shot my own reference and gathered ideas from google images if I could without straying too far from what I wanted and went forward with the drawing.
I usually do much more detailed drawings, but for this one I knew the metal and reflections would be a big part of the image, so it was more important to keep an idea of the landmarks and planes of the armor. I'd do most of my tonal work with the paint, but kept the thumbnail and reference up on the side to give me a map of where to go with it.
Even though I do most of my work digitally these days, I try and keep the process almost exactly as I would when working with oil paint. Here, You can see what the initial lay in looks like on top of the drawing. I'm being loose, and lay down my mid tones first before establishing true darks and highlights. Color relationships at this stage are incredibly important, setting up a language of warm/cool interacting. To me, this is often more important than tone, especially when painting skin.
This is a time where a lot of happy accidents can happen, such as the where the top of the helmet really appears to blend backward and glow!
Here, I've established my focus of the painting. Even though it will evolve as I go, I always feel I need something to work with to start pushing and pulling from different areas. I would have no idea what color to make of the cloak or hands without understanding first what they were playing off of. This stage can also be done backwards, working from least important area to most important. Either way- push,pull.
I handle painting digitally with a simple formula, lay in what I need and then blend it together with the blend tool. it's that simple. sometimes I drop down the flow of the brush I'm painting with and I can get away with just slowly painting layer on layer with no blending.
According to my thumbnail, I felt I was almost done, but thankfully I have a cliff that I climb sometimes when I'm in a pinch to speak to wise men and an oracle about the right path in life (thanks, Todd) and this time the gods spoke that I might do with an alternate light to separate the pieces, and something to help separate the helmet from the armor.
This is where having that exact idea really hurt me. Sometimes you go into something thinking you've got it, when in reality you close yourself off from the flow of ideas.
I ended up remodeling a lot of the piece, including the idea that he was wearing plate mail at all. I figured, "So what if it's a spartan-ish helmet. No one said that the treasure you find in a dragon's hoard had to match your outfit." Now he's much more simple with his chain mail and tabard. I knew instantly that it worked and allowed me to better control with pinpoints of light where to lead the eye. It wasn't as hard as you might think because, again, I am pushing and pulling what I'm doing constantly to resolve with the focus.
So to finish it up, I did some deepening of the shadows and added some grit under the fingernails. I changed with some color "glazes" (layers) the vibrance of certain areas, and ended up with a piece I can be proud of!
If there's any questions or anything I missed, feel free to let me know in the comment section!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allen.morris.3152
Email: allenmorrisart@gmail.com
