Felt like doing another environmental piece. Here’s an update on my work-in-progress!
Everything in my brain these days is a little solarpunk-tinged, but I wanted to try using some ref from our travels along the north of Lake Superior for the environment, since I feel like Solarpunk as a genre usually goes for a more tropical or temperate instead of boreal ecosystem feel, but obviously people can live sustainably – and have, and do, and will – at all latitudes.
Also I just love to draw a big ol’ spruce!
Process so far:
First, rough (really rough) sketches stacked on top of each other and filled with airbrushed colour. I built the palette from my colour ref screenshots folder, and while I like some parts of it it wasn’t quite hitting for me. Also, I accidentally composed an image where there’s a key split right at the halfway point horizontally, which isn’t working for me either.

So then we did some grabbing and moving of compositional elements, and also I used a whole array of adjustment layers to start tweaking the colours, bringing in more cold atmospheric perspective and varying the temperature of the different light sources:

With that hammered out it was time for a Clean Drawing! I throw a 15% opacity white layer over everything so I can see what I’m doing:

And the drawing is mostly done now! Next pass will be Small Charming Detail drawing additions (maybe adding a few more people, or wildlife, or graffiti?) and also I missed some safety railings, but we’re just about ready to start painting.

One of the things I used to think was silly was taking the time to do the drawing like this. At my most warmed-up, I can draw as I paint, at least a little bit, but after decades of doing this kind of work I am forced to admit that thinking about the narrative (location, time of day, set dressing, character posing, environmental storytelling etc) is a drawing activity for me, not a painting one. That feels a bit weird to admit, but it’s true! Once I’m thinking about value and colour, I stop prioritizing narrative as much – maybe because painting is more of a math style activity, using a less verbal part of my mind? Drawing is definitely WAY more verbal for me.
Anyways, the clean drawing remains a VERY important stage, and I would like my concept art teachers from 16 years ago to hear me say this aloud: you were right. Do the drawing. Stop skipping the damn drawing.
Anyways, this piece is gonna take me some time to paint, but I’ll be sure to drop back in when I have more to show of it! And if you have feedback or suggestions, you know where the comments form is!
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