I began the process by creating a multitude of thubmnail drawings to iterate my ideas for composition. I very quickly landed on the idea of the Ivory tower beigng located atop a giant mammoth skull.
I quickly created a speed painting to play with colour palettes, depth and composition again. I orientated towards a fantasy landscape, but wanted to continue my research before pushing any further forward.
Having sufficiently roamed around various ideas, I finally landed on a full composition I liked inspired particularly by the hills and mountains of Scotland.
I can often struggle with colour palettes so I used a simple technique to block in middtone colours to understand how the image would eventually read colour-wise. I particularly thought about the warmth of the image and chose to go for a colder palette.
I created a photobash as a quick experiment again with the readability of the image and generally to see how a finished piece might look.
My first creation was a bit of a disaster, the colour choice became to bright and dysfunctional, looking more sickly then inviting. However, I learned a lot about the design I wanted for the Ivory tower itself - particularly to simplify it.
Starting anew, I went for a landscape orientation to give a better sense of scope and expansiveness of the environment. Starting with a simple black and white composition piece, I set about building up the layers and designs.
I also created a seperate file to work on my figure for the end result.
I started with tthe base colours and began to work in the details from the background of the image. Breaking down the image into: Sky; Ivory Tower; Background Hills; Middground hills; River; Foreground Rocks; and the Figure.
My choice to add in the full moon helped to show off my choice of cold nighttime colours, and give some strong shadows where needed.
I developed a sense of contrast between the tip of the tower and the edges of the background to help focus the viewer's eye on the Ivory Tower.
Here, I add most of the details, from the background well into the foreground and soon developed my final digure to be inserted into the image.
Some final details are added and and overlays of colours and saturation enhancers to help bring the whole image together.