Concept Painting

Finally had some time this week to get into some concept painting again. Wasn’t referencing anything really, just tried to be fast and bold with my good ol’ lasso tool. Grab a big, epic shape and start painting. I don’t know why I chose this particular subject, I have no affinity toward post-apocalyptic megacities per se, but I’m like epic scale thingies generally. I was inspired by James Paick‘s excellent tutorial to try some new tricks (who knew — Lighten layer effect!) and thought I’d give the technique a go. I like how painting like this forces me to make quick compositional decisions and not dink around too much (I bore easily, so don’t zoom into the details too far; you’ll see the stone wall that forms most of that center column:)). The hardest part I guess is just watching the values, making sure the atmospheric perspective is accurate across the entire piece.

I love using Lightroom and playing around with various looks. Here are a few more: