Gloaming Born

[PMD]

Hi everyone,

This went through a number of iterations over the 6 weeks or so that it took to complete – I began with the idea of an ancient dryad presiding over some kind of wedding ceremony, and it evolved into a concept based around birth and parenthood. This dryad is nurturing her own young sapling in the gloaming.

The image is about 11500 x 6500 – the biggest I’ve ever done, and was created that large so I can print it off as a mural for my daughter, about 3 metres wide. You can’t see it at this resolution, but the glade is teeming with life – beavers, a fox, wild boar, a stag, a faun, fish, frogs etc – all things she can pick out when this is printed at full resolution. I’ll probably add more as time goes by but I wanted to call this ‘finished’ for now. It is my usual combination of painting and photography (all my own except for the heavily over-painted little girl and some stock critters).

Thanks a million for looking and take care,

Phil

PS I'm rambling a bit here but in case anyone's interested, I kept track of the 200 or so layers, trying to show how it was built up from scratch, tree by tree, rock by rock almost - you can see a ‘guide’ image here, where every 'patch'is a seperate layer -

http://tinyurl.com/345npj

[Sylvain-Klein]

wow oO

a lot of details, impressive work ! really !

[SEVANS]

Beautiful scene.
Very impressive

[George Bieber]

Nice concept. Looks real but not too photo-ish.

[PMD]

Thanks for commenting folks!

[El Jeremie]

Really impressive, with a lot of details, maybe too much.
Anyway very good job

[paran0id]

I hope there are part photos in there cause else man.. you rock. But still the focus on the small tree gets kinda lost...

[PMD]

There's lots of photographic elements in there, DigitalSeeker - I mentioned that in the opening post - they were all taken by me (except for a reference for the girl, and some stock creatures), but yes, they're in there


I understand what you mean about the focus - the reasoning behind that is this was designed as a mural, to be looked at in a very different way to a standard composition - ie it has to work 'all the way along' from left to right - it will end up being very large on a bedroom wall. I tried to create many different compositions/points of interest which would work together as one.



Thanks for commenting!

Phil

PS This is probably a stupid question, but can anyone tell me how to get a thumbnail into the thread title? Thanks!

[Phil Moss]

Very good! I'm always a bit confused when photographic and digital elements are mixed, I'm never sure if I like it - but my gripes about digital aside, it's a very atmospheric image! I love the way there's loads of detail, I spent ages searching the painting for all the animals - I was actually a bit dissapointed when you showed blowups - it was like finding the answers before I'd had long enough to look!! .
The only critique I can give as I'm unfamiliar with how it all works, is that perhaps the details and animals etc could have been more simple in tone, like an alan lee painting?
Very lucky daughter!

[PMD]

Thanks Phil, I appreciate the comment. I understand that there's a large school who don't like digital painting mixed photo integrations - I'm glad you found it appealing despite your reservations! One of the things I've always tried to do is be very up front about how I use my own photography sometimes - often I see matte-paintings with clearly photographic elements which are never mentioned in the description. Thanks man! Phil