DSG 1326: Environment: NATURAL FEATURE OF DIRT AND ROOTS RISES OUT OF WINDSWEPT PLAIN

[William b. Hand]

[ What??! ]

[ My usage of environmental topics has been anemic. ]

[ Will endeavour to alter. ]

Environment: NATURAL FEATURE OF DIRT AND ROOTS RISES OUT OF WINDSWEPT PLAIN
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[zenarion]

Ere we go:

I am not too sure i am getting this

[dan liimatta]

Watery plain, where the roots also sprout flowers; and well, I have a rock, and that might count as dirt, right? right?

Took an hour give or take; though I had planned for 3, but the first two was lost due to a crash.

[johnn]

it's been a while between posts!

[SkullClutter]

I don't post here as often as I should. I also don't do environments as often as I should. Here's to killing two birds with one stone!

Here's my first attempt at the DSG, hope to take part (fairly) regularly.


dan liimatta: Neat idea, I hadn't thought of using a floodplain. Love the colours.

[dan liimatta]

BitJockey Happy little accidents, happy little accidents; nothing in this one was planned, and I simply trashed some self portraits together with the T-REX DSG; played with brushes and then found a view in the mess I made and cleaned it up.

[Vanvalen]

a couple of nice dsg's here

I spent about 2 hours on this...was playing around with layer blending modes and other such stuff...still kinda turned out a bit flat and boring...but it's all good stuff...



VV

[cw]

was fun, remind me to much of my under-tree-road one though, perspective came out loads flatter than i planned.

[Hamsta]

[Dead Clown]

Hey all, this is my first upload to here. Go nuts on the crits, but just make it constructive

Time spent - 25min last night in bed sketching - 20min scan and clean while I should of been doing other stuff this morning - ~30min at lunch to play with painting in photoshop.

Still trying to find the best way, that suits my style, to turn a sketch into a digital artwork. Opinions welcome!

[Dead Clown]

Oh and its the first time I've fkd around with brushes - just the PS standards.

[Ryoken]

Gonna use DSGs to practice different brushes, since up until now I've only used one. ; ;

[muleskinner]

Spent a lot of time trying to get the environment worked out. Still seems kinda flattened out to me.

[revenebo]

Hi!

I vote for Apocalypse Rex.

[scumworks]

[Zaelzar]

[Piecemaker]

hey there
im a bit late again
great environments here.

Zaelzar
gutsy use of colors -> thats good. it looks like the sun is throwning a shadow by itself because the red reflection is darker than the yellow sand which looks a bit weird. also the shadow of the rootthing seems to be mirrored-> maybe the red thing is a moon? and the real lightsource is a bit to the right outside the canvas?

scumworks great colors and brushstrokes. I like it

revenebo great details and good angles

muleskinner your choice of colors give some kewl athmosphere.

Ryoken not bad but i know that you can do better.

Dead Clown looks good but i think when you flip your canvas horizontally the composition would improve a lot. the point of interest would be in the lower right focus point (rule of thrids) and the light would come from the top left. a quick way to give your bw picture depth in photoshop is to add an overlay layer with maybe 30-50% opacity and fill it with a radial gradient from white to black (from the middle to the border)

Hamsta simple but nice

Apocalypse_Rex great work as always.

Vanvalen good work. reminds me of the summoned tentacles from the intro for guild wars nightfall

bitjockey nice you joined in. your picture needs a tad more depths i think. you could do this by making the background a bit lighter (and a litle boozed and les saturated) and increase the contrast for your foreground object.

johnn interesting sketch. love it

dan liimatta i really dig your usage of color. so far your environment is my favorite

Mitze nice one

zenarion you get a kewl plain there:-)

again i hope i didnt do to many spelling mistakes.
here is my sketch. I didnt take the time to colorize it because i skrewed up the shape of the roots thing.
I would be happy about ruthless crits and comments

[BeagleFury]

[cw]

nice atmosphere there piecemaker!

[Piecemaker]

thanks man

the word: WINDSWEPT was important to me

you got cooler roots though

[cw]

aye, cheap ass roots though, 75% custom brush ;-)

[muleskinner]

Thanks for the comment Piecemaker. I love the wild looking structure you have going on in yours, very dominant and foreboding. Great rendering and depth to your scene.
Definitely a lot of inspiring posts here. Its good to be back again.

[revenebo]

Piecemaker Great! Creepy mood, good atmospheric perspective and interesting idea (and since I love b&w pieces I prefer it colorless...).

My appreciation also to dan liimatta for the Turner-ish effect of color and atmopsphere and to Vanvalen for the fleshy living tentacle look of the plant.

[Piecemaker]

thanks for all the comments

actually my pic is somewhat cheap as well

i think i used about 60% custom brushes 20% gradients and 20% standart brushes.

here is a last one i spent about 20 minutes on. had no time for thumbnails, guidlines, composition checkers or colors:-) -> guess thats why it looks so strange

it is supposed to be some wizards den between the roots of an old tree



good work all

[ashton]

markers in the desert.

[SkullClutter]

Piecemaker Thanks for the tip - I'll keep that in mind for next time.

[Hamsta]

Piecemaker I think your first pic is much closer to the topic, so I'll concentrate on that (the second is more like the tunnel under the roots topic)
I'm not really seeing this as a windswept plain, since it's feels constrained by the forests on the sides, and there's so much going on with all the dead trees, crosses and what not.
I like your stylized people, and the textures. Even custom brushes need thought put behind them.

[Antilight77]

Mr Abu was lost out in the sands... stumbling .. lost with out hope.. his camel dead and water running out in the sand storm - the sands brake and he sees a collection of trees with an opening at its base.. little did he know that this was the home of the hideous GIANT SCORPIONS .. and his wanders was about to come to a quick end.

[Piecemaker]

thx very much for all your feedback hamsta

ya definitely right; the picture is too full with all the high contrast objects in the foreground. i guess the thing is that i spent too much effort on working out the foreground. I disliked the treething once i realized how flat and boring it turned out so i stopped working on it what a shame. regarding the wind swept plain i thought about a forrest whose trees have been swept away by the wind. another thing that hurts the picture is the detail imbalance between foreground and sky. however i think i got a lot of strong actionlines to guide the viewer through the picture which makes it relatively easy to grasp the picture. here is my composition breakdown:

i used the two strongest focus points to place my rootthing there