Feel free to skip this paragraph if you just want to read about the art-making process. In this situation and unlike the tense sort-of stalemate in the previous entry illustration, the Neoteric General on the horse is attacking the stronghold of the Primordial Shadowmage, who had promised the noblewoman inside her fort that would not be taken by the King's army because, you know, they were attacking to get to the noblewoman so she could marry the King. Coincidentally the King is the same dude that had cursed the prophet in the previous illustration. So, yeah, there's a kind of obvious antagonist that's screwing things up here.
After the last illustration, I was exhausted of anything that had green and earthy colors in general. I also really wanted to try out doing an action scene since I rarely seem to do anything like the sort. Thus, this came out where it's saturated, impossible colors all around and it's in the gripping climax before the huge clash that will determine the fight between two equally tied forces.
This time, I didn't do a color thumbnail as I was pressed for time for this work and just went in with just some vague idea of what color matching I was going to do. I guess that ended up making this work pretty saturated and I'm still not sure if I like that or not.
Unfortunately (and as usual), my original intention to make the breaking shards around the woman (or the Shadow) look like it was building up, to draw some staves behind the horse-riding man (the General) to give the illusion of an army, and generally not making the entire thing cliché with the glow effects didn't quite go through. I also had trouble with trying to balance the complicated negative spaces given by the breaking shards while trying to show it was some kind of barrier summoned by the Shadow. The negative spaces worked out, but I think it's hard to tell if the Shadow is summoning anything in the first place instead of just, you know, attacking back. The guy's face also bothers me a lot and I think it's the chin...?
The light source was notoriously confusing to figure out as well. I had wanted an underglow where the woman was while her front was lit up by her magic hands and a spark of light of the staff on the General's body and horse. So there were a lot of light sources, but I think I got them spot on enough that it was easy to tell where the center of attention was without being distracted by the other paraphernalia. In reality, I think all this light stuff is impossible, haha. That or the place itself is very, very pitch black.
On positive note, I think I did the textures on the General and the horse pretty well while the diagonal slant of the illustration and its characters add to the action. I adore how the light catches the Primordial Triad coat of arms/pendent-thing from the under glow, the Shadow's tattoos that reflect her spells, the "Statue of Liberty" crown on the General, the wildness in the steed's eye, and, in general, I had a lot of fun designing the clothes for the characters. I appreciated those qualities more than I did with the illustration as a whole.
Still, overall, I had fun doing something more action-packed than my usual stuff. Oddly enough I always wanted to do action-packed stuff, but my pieces always end up somewhat peaceful...?
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