SVS Prompt for Dec 2023: Rock Fortress

 Hello all,

    This month I decided to make a piece for the SVS prompt: Rock Fortress. This is for the How to Fix Your Art livestreams they do every month, where they pick a few pieces for which to do an in-depth critique. Whether or not my piece is picked though, having a monthly prompt helps motivate me to finish a piece, and hopefully it will help me build a habit of finishing pieces consistently.

    Here is my submission for the month:

    I'm really proud of it because it made me really think about planning the piece in advance since there are so many elements and they all need details and atmosphere added to them.

    I created the final piece in Procreate on the iPad, but I started brainstorming on paper.

    My first thought was just to start drawing rocks of different shapes and sizes to see what was interesting. After I know what is interesting about a drawing subject, it's easier for me to plan a story for that thing.

    I looked at a good deal of reference and found that standing stones were particularly interesting and had good story potential. Then I had the thought to create a misty scene with spirits peeking out from behind standing stones, with one dominant spirit in the background, apparently guarding or inhabiting the "fortress." 

    After I had my idea and basic composition down, I knew I needed to think of a style in which to render it and a color scheme for the image. I looked at a bunch of images that I felt captured the same tone and did a few studies to see what kind of hue and value ranges there were. From there I was able to do a create a similar tone with similar hue and value ranges.

    Once I had that figured out, it was on to the final painting, in which I made sure to take my time, keep track of my layers and stick to the plan. The final painting took much less time than it would have without all the planning that went into the piece. Plus, I saved myself a lot of headache and frustration that usually comes with pushing and pulling on a piece that barely had any thought put into it.

    So that's my process on this piece; I hope you enjoyed peeking behind the curtain for a few minutes.

    In other news, I'm starting work on a revamp of my Inktober 2023 story, wherein I'll be expanding some of the chapters, polishing some of the illustrations, and finally getting the thing ready to print! My plan right is to use an on-demand printer such as Kindle Direct Publishing, but I have a lot of work to do before we get there, so stay tuned!

Sarah