Scenes Of Nature Contest: Sahara Dreams

Hello Steemians,

This is my submission for Scenes of Nature Contest by @sethlinson. My medium of painting is digital and software used is Photoshop.

Inspiration

Painting nature is one of my weaknesses, along with taking the stairs and a good juicy burger. If I am painting something, it is almost always going to be a character with only a little bit of background thrown in. So I thought this contest was a great opportunity to try out painting a scene with nature as the main subject.

So first things first, I had to think of a scene to do. Mountains, cliffs over oceans, snowy fields. Then I thought of what is not usually done. The Desert. Then I remembered a game called Battlefield 1 which had some of the most beautiful art direction in a desert that I have ever seen. I even purchased the artbook for it.

A still from Battlefield 1. image source

References

So desert it is! Now to find some references. I knew that I wanted to feature some of those unique rock formations that you can only find in a desert. Here are some of the references I used.

image source

image source

image source

Painting Stage

This is a time-lapse of my process in the video.

I started with a rough sketch. My idea was to have a rock formation known as a natural arch in the middle. Fun Fact The largest natural arch in the world is located in china and is named Xianren Bridge. I then selected the main colors that I want to use. Next comes the rough shadows. It is important to know where your light is coming from because that will affect your shadow length and highlights. Now your brain should be processing those shapes and you should be able to see a rocky terrain.

So this is where I expanded the canvas so there are more room on the sides . Then it was all about blocking in those shapes the get the most believably I can achieve. Eventually I felt that the scene was missing something. There was no story being told. So I added a Biplane flying above the arch. The Red Baron maybe?

Final

Here is the final result. I flipped the canvas, because I felt the scene looked better this way.

I also extended the sides a bit more to see what it looks like with a more wider view.

Here's a close up of the plane.

Closing

All in all, it was a fun piece to do. I would like to say thank you to @sethlinson for creating this contest. I can't wait to see what wonderful art the others have created.

Thanks for watching .

@wanaf

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