The Ancient Ones

**A Gregorie** · January 25th, 2010, 09:37 PM

Quick speed painting of an elder god 2hrs

here is a link to the painting on deviantart

http://vagabondviper.deviantart.com/...-WIP-151656346

**Jack the R** · January 25th, 2010, 10:37 PM

Needs more light and middle light tones. It's all darks and medium darks.

But I would suggest sticking to drawing for now. As the saying goes, "Every artist has a thousand bad drawings in them." Start a sketchbook and get yours out of the way.

**A Gregorie** · January 26th, 2010, 02:49 PM

Hey Jack thanks for the advice.

In the painting I was really going for an under-light type of lighting and try and create the mysterious ominous type mood of a fire for the lighting and I actually toned it down in this one so that it was darker.

So how can I take what you said and apply it to still get that mood across?

And I do keep a sketch book and draw all the time. Maybe I am just not praticing the right things.

Anyone one else? I plan on continueing to work on this one so any ideas on where to take it from here would be great!!!

**Lhune** · January 26th, 2010, 07:03 PM

Here's to try and help you out.

You can actually set a dark, mysterious mood while still using very bright lights and very deep darks. If you want to make him look really ancient and somewhat magical/mysterious, strange backlights, glowy eyes and a dusty, wrinkly appearance will almost always do the trick. Perhaps to make him look more God-like, have the character itself seemingly dissolve into smoke or what have you? Just decrease the size of your picture and roughly play with light and shadows, don't be afraid to go crazy.

I quickly painted over your drawing to show you what I mean, see it as a suggestion.

**Jack the R** · January 28th, 2010, 02:10 AM

What Lhune said - now get crackin'.

**Lhune** · January 28th, 2010, 02:57 AM

Oh lol. At first I thought there must be something really weird going on with this thread, but I now noticed that he's got two of them. Did you purposely start two threads or was it an accident? If so I'd ask a mod to remove one because it's very confusing indeed.

**A Gregorie** · January 28th, 2010, 06:27 AM

wow I really had no clue there were two of these threads I too was wondering what was going on. Anyways thanks for the double advice guys and gals. in the immortal words of Bill Nye the Science Guy..."NOW YOU KNOW!!!"

**Falchion** · January 28th, 2010, 09:40 AM

My advice? Too much Cthulhu, and not enough fthagn. The pics are far too well-organized and orderly to really represent the classic image of Lovecraft's non-Euclidean elder gods.

**A Gregorie** · January 28th, 2010, 09:53 PM

haha yeah Yagsathoth (sp?) would be nice. I really wasn't going for Cthulu here honestly. It just kinda came out like that. really.

Like no joke....

4 serious

**Nezumi Works** · January 28th, 2010, 10:39 PM

I think one thing that bugs me about this piece is all the tentacles originate from essentially the same plane. So rather than a nest of tentacles, he ends up with a row, which looks a bit sillier than I think you intended. When planning, think about setting a few of those roots back behind the others, even if you can't see them in the final.

Maybe look to something like sea anemones for reference.