Shrine in the Clouds

What an absolute pleasure to bring this to you today. I may have finally found a balance that is appealing to me between buildings, rocks and foliage. This one was a chance for me to really blast off and try out all of the things I have been practicing. Without going to far into describing this I think the wins, at least for me, came in my restraint to keep all of my most detailed work close to the door. I used the atmosphere of the foggy cloudy cover to push away things that weren't important to the story and also create lots of depth in the scene. I also kept myself from getting too carried away with the foliage in the trees. All in all I think the end result is something that is pleasing to look at and not too busy or confusing. Yay!

I was very taken by the variety for this study. The mix of different plants and colors throughout were very fun and interesting to paint. I think what may have saved me on this round was that I didn't pay super close attention to making a "finished" image with the study and really only tried to figure out how to solve the more complicated problems within in before moving to the imagination phase.

Doing all these is definitely starting to become noticeable for me in terms of speed of iteration and courage to just throw down ideas without getting too precious about it all. I would highly encourage any artist to start doing more studies as often as possible. It's not even about making a perfect finished image but about allowing for your brain to solve these problems regularly enough so that it becomes second nature. I would never boast that I am getting close to that kind of freedom with my art but it does feel very nice when I'm not stressing as much about rocks or trees. It's still not totally easy but it definitely doesn't feel as heavy as it has in the past.

Cheers!