Rowan Greycastle VS Orcus
Key Moment Concept Art
14/06/24
Snowballing Sketch
This was one of my first big key moment pieces. Certainly the first that I completed. It was a project that took on a life of its own and became a big, multi-month learning experience.
When I started, I originally planned to make a small artwork of my D&D character to be able to fill in a token, and get the brain-worm of her design out of my head.
Thumbnailing is still something that I'm learning to do - and with how this sketch seemed to wriggle out of control, I skipped it. In hindsight, it would have helped me massively to pause at this stage and get even 3 thumbnails done to experiment with the composition with speed.
Instead, I found myself constantly changing my mind and messing around with every part of the piece throughout the whole project. I was never satisfied and it took a lot of brute-force to get anywhere.
Composition
Looking back, these early stages do have an interesting and successful composition and I almost wish that I had stuck with it. However, I was unsure of what the purpose of the piece actually was - To show off Rowan? to show both Rowan and Orcus equally? was it more environmental?
Even though I thought I was painting a character splash art for Rowan, it definitely is a key moment piece. It's obvious here and at the end - the focus is the action!
I think in future, I'll reuse this pose of Orcus as I really liked where it was going. I just struggled with placing the two characters in the scene without getting confused on distance. I tried going back into black and white multiple times to understand the values which were all over the place!
​Painting Rowan
Since I struggled so much with the overall composition, I pivoted to painting up Rowan. As a character, she's the down to earth one - raised in a small town in the middle of nowhere, she's constantly confused by the fantastical events around her, but prevails nonetheless. This was something I think I communicated pretty successfully in my design. Her clothes are dark and basic, with miss-matched leather armour and no ostentatious decoration. The focus is all on her spellbook and the golden light she draws from it.
I'm also proud of her face and hair, and the lighting of it. The tweaked pose lets you see more of her face, and her hair really shows a sense of motion.
But, once I'd finished laying down a good base for Rowan, I had to face the background and Orcus again.
I knew that the aspect ratio and composition just wouldn't work for the current pose of Orcus. No matter what I tried, he looked too small or too far away to be menacing. I had to make a drastic change.
I pulled him in and had him grabbing the chains that surround Rowan. This pose is much more threatening and makes it feel like he's about to run out of the canvas.
Getting Somewhere
At this stage, I felt a lot more confident. I'd found a good fix for my main issue, and just had to tweak it.
I changed the rotation of his body to bring the opposite hand forward, so it'd feel like Rowan was bracing away from him whilst he pulls the chain - bringing the viewer closer. This felt even more menacing, and bridges the gap between them.
After this, it was a matter of finishing. This still took me several weeks to complete (in between other projects and life events like always) as I still struggled with the perspective.
Getting Orcus to look in the right direction, having his hands make sense, the shape and material of the chains - especially with all the light reflections - was a challenge; especially painting with a large ~4000x2000 canvas. I fell down the rabbit hole of details that no one would see, simply because it was possible to paint them.
Overall, I'm really proud of the final piece and I learned a lot through the process of making it. If I had to do it again - I'd thumbnail and itterate at the beginning, rather than halfway through!
