Firepool

I've never been very good with titles..

Today I wanted to train in thumbnail environments. I'd make a very tiny but clear B&W drawing, and then several, to train lighting, composition etc. But once I'd penned down the first one in a minute, it became interesting enough (for me) to continue. Added more black, more white, more rocks, more light, and so on. Still was basic. Now I've been having some trouble converting a black and white drawing into colour. In fact, I had a huge amount of trouble converting things over. So when I was doing this one, I figured I'd have to have a go at it sometime and do it well enough for once so I could 'flow' from sketch to a basic environment in full colour.

Anyway.. here's what I did. Kinda. I lost a few steps because.. well.. I'm using just one layer in photoshop :) So some things got lost because I keep removing and painting new things.


This is the black and white version. It's already quite elaborate at this point, but it basically shows where I wanted the light to be, and what would be causing that light. A teensy crater.. or something.







Funky, innit? I figured I'd try this for my missing key to go from black and white into colour. I decided the middle main color for the light and simply adjusted the black and white into that. With it, I kinda removed the light, so I had to rebuild that into there, but now I had a colour base so it would make things easier rather than to plunk a color down on a greyscale. Whoo! I should have thought of this before. I know it's probably a bit of cheating, and there must be more noble and sophisticated ways, but heck... argh, I can only do so much..



Woops.. different, eh? Nyeah.. this is where I skipped many steps to show it. I added more space to the right, added the light I wanted, removed and changed the rocks in front. In all, it went from tiny crater to a lake with something hot and a mountain range in the back. At this point, I'm only going to dink around with the details..




And this is what I ended up with. About... 6 hours later. Still a bit rough here and there, but I have to put it away now. So, how is it?