Silence on the Mountain: Illustration process part 1

First WIP image for silence on the mountain

The time has now come for me to begin the latest illustration for stories of atlas. With barely a couple of days to recover from the massive strain of painting the Rite of Bloodlet image, I’m back to the graphics tablet for my latest epic endeavour! So basically I’m painting again, it’s time for Silence on the mountain.

The image above shows roughly where I am with this one. I had originally planned to include the crashed airship in the right foreground of the image, but after consultation with my art director (Mike) it was agreed that this way conveyed a suitable sense of bleak isolation and showed things in a more subtle emotional way than just plonking a big airship wreck in the middle.

There’s no accompanying sketchbook work for this one besides a couple of scribbled notes describing the lanndscape. For this I just dived in head first and got down what was in my head rather than worrying about details. I also used a new method of painting; starting with one layer in monotone blocking out the tones and then adding colour on a second layer. Im pretty pleased with it so far, now for lots of tidying up and detail adding…