More Painting Practice

Last night I finally managed to finish cobbling together Chapter 2 of A Golden Wake.  This involved several placeholder backgrounds which, to be honest, left me feeling somewhat anxious.  The reason for this is because they are set at a very fancy and opulent location, which is going to require an immense amount of detail, and my insecurities came out and made me think that what I wanted to achieve was above my skill level.

Luckily, I have the very talented Sergeant Sweets Tin aka Ben304 to help me out.  Up until recently, his internet didn't have sufficient bandwidth for more than speaking on Skype with voice, but now he is able to share his screen.  Therefore, I have been able to watch him paint.  He's been kind enough to share techniques with me by telling me about them, but watching them in action is much more helpful.  Just today I watched him do a speed painting which was extremely informative, and I think will help me out tremendously with regards to these complex backgrounds.

In the meantime, I went back and touched up a few existing backgrounds yet again, but also decided to practice a bit and do a speed painting of my own.  The result was this:

Still have a ways to go, but I'm pleased with the tree at least.

   Also, for fun last week I decided to redo a background from Ben Jordan 3, but today I revised it a bit and made it a bit more spooky.

No more burn tool!

So basically, it's all about overcoming that mental block where the little voice inside your head says, "no, that's too difficult, you'll never make it look right."  Practice is the best way to silence that voice, because he's an asshole.