Azure Cavern Lake

This is a digital painting that is still in progress, but I thought it would be interesting to share with you guys a little bit about my work process. First stage would the conceptualization stage, which usualy is a sketch using pencil, which might be inked in properly with .3/.5 pens afterwards, depending on the look. This time i'm going for a more "painterly" effect without the sharp outlines, so I just scanned in a very rough pencil composition.

The idea is a scene of a large underground lake, cavernous but with its own network of jetties and pendulous architecture hanging from the cavern ceiling, a bit inspired by the carved profiles of classical balustrades and columns. We see a protagonist taking in the whole scene, but I haven't defined him/her yet.

The next step is to paint the entire scene in a monochrome wash to establish all the darks and lights of the scene. This creates some form of depth and defines the main objects. Of course, this is done very quickly and intuitively so I won't get obsessed with filling in confusing details right at the start.

Now I establish the main colour scheme for the picture - a dark, greenish-grey look that makes the buildings look like they are carved out of jade. The only differering colour is a warm highlight in the corner, where an opening to daylight allows little sphere-copters to emerge out of the cave.

That's all for now, folks. Stay tuned to monitor my progress!