A turning point..

I have set myself a task for the Christmas holidays starting this week, to spend a lot of time painting a much more proffessional illustration as i'm sick of constantly producing quick pieces that don't showcase what i can do, or push myself to any further extent. I hope that i can achieve a really good result so that i can put it into my portfolio and start advertising for freelance work again, fingers crossed.

Above are the references and inspiration that i'm using and below are the thumbnails that i've painted so far:

 

 Update 10/12/2010 (Below)

This one was painted a bit hap-hazardly, the composition taken straight from another painting, or aleast heavily inspired, and then the cave was shoved in quite quickly and has a very stupid placement.... oh well, many more thumbs to go until i'm happy enough to create a final one to use for the final placement.

 

Update 11/12/2010 (Below)

Heres the start of a new thumbnail idea for the painting, however i'm taking much longer with this one as i'm really keen on the idea comming from it. I wanted to focus on perspective in this thumb and a much closer composition, which is going quite well, lets see how it progresses. This painting has also given me a plot idea for the piece which is:    "A very intricate, royal castle has been corrupt by a dragon entity., the kingdom surrounding the castle are under fire more and more each day from within the castle." I like this idea it allows me to play with the contrasts of ‘good and evil’ ‘ dark and light’ ‘green and red’ etc in the paintings and is also not 100% cliché but is relatable to other plot ideas allowing me to use them as inspiration wtihout copying them fully.

And then here is the final version of this thumbnail, still quite rough but i really like the overall feel and theme of the image, this is my favourite so far. I couldn't decide on a colour scheme so here are two monotone schemes, cool and warm.

Update 13/12/2010 (Below)

I am very happy with this latest thumb, i spent alot more time on this one again and feel as though i'm getting much closer to what i'd like the final image to look like, atleast in terms of content. May develope this one a bit more by adding some snow and more elements but otherwise i'm happy with it overall atleast for a thumb.