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Description
[Edit] After receiving some feedback from my instructor I made some adjustments to the final piece.
What do you guys think? (I also added a blue cast just to make it prettier.)

This was an assignment for Perspective class (studying atmospheric Perspective and composition).
I'm really lazy today so I'm just going to include my explanation of my method and artist's statement from my class. I don't feel like retyping it.

I'm not really looking for critique on this. I will get professional critique from my teacher who is amazing and that's good enough for me.

***
Here is my assignment. I completed the composition on bristol board as per the optional suggestion. This was a challenging assignment because I wanted to really create a composition I would enjoy working on and I ended up getting stuck on a night scene with a lot of glowing bio-luminescent plants. That's my fault. But I figured that it must be possible to portray atmospheric perspective regardless of the type of scene.

I am really into Guild Wars 2 right now and the most amazing thing to me has been the new race they designed for this game, the Sylvari. They are a race of sentient plant beings who are not born but rather, awakened from a dream into the world by their mother, The Pale Tree. The Sylvari home city is a beautiful organic city grown about the roots of the Pale Tree herself, a beautiful, colossal splendor who flowers upward and towers above her children below. Every aspect of the Sylvari, from their bodies to their clothes to their city are grown in patterns that replicate the ways that plants really grow. The Sylvari even have bio-luminescence as a part of their bodies and as a part of their leafy/flowery hair.

In this scene, my warrior, Sanileia, is returning home to The Grove after a quest and pauses to gaze up at her mother, The Pale Tree, who glows gently in the dim evening while the fireflies and bio-luminescent plants light her path home.

This was a really fun composition to create. I paid close attention to the Rule of Thirds and placed my focal points at key intersections as much as possible. I wanted the eye to land first on Sanileia, and then to travel down the path to the arch and up toward the Pale Tree. I think I was successful in my execution of this plan.

I feel that my use of the traditional media could still be stronger. I am still not terribly skilled at laying down smooth graphite. The woodless pencil and battery eraser were immensely helpful to me in this as they were both really efficient for their purposes. I also used my kneaded eraser all over the place to pull out bits of graphite and leave highlights, and to smudge the cloudy sky. I also loved the bristol board for this composition as the erasing needed to complete this kind of work would have torn a lighter paper.

I did not exactly copy a screenshot from the game, but I included a screenshot that I used for reference so that the design of the character and the tree and the area I was portraying could all be clearly seen. I purposefully adjusted the composition to a more pleasing layout and I edited the landscape a bit to fit my needs as such. I didn't want to center Sanileia, so I could not create a screenshot that matched my composition (as the camera in game is fixed behind the player). I did not want to include the other Sylvari seen in the screenshot either because this composition was meant to focus on just Sanileia, The Grove, and The Pale Tree.

I certainly hope the effort and love I put into this work is evident!

***

I already got feedback from my instructor on how to improve it, but he didn't have as much to say about it as I had expected. I'm going to take his advice and improve it because I can totally see what he's talking about. It's not a lot of change tho. Just a bit of shifting values around to create better depth.

***

Art (c) Arsh Darksbane
All Rights Reserved.

Description
[Edit] After receiving some feedback from my instructor I made some adjustments to the final piece.
What do you guys think? (I also added a blue cast just to make it prettier.)

This was an assignment for Perspective class (studying atmospheric Perspective and composition).
I'm really lazy today so I'm just going to include my explanation of my method and artist's statement from my class. I don't feel like retyping it.

I'm not really looking for critique on this. I will get professional critique from my teacher who is amazing and that's good enough for me.

***
Here is my assignment. I completed the composition on bristol board as per the optional suggestion. This was a challenging assignment because I wanted to really create a composition I would enjoy working on and I ended up getting stuck on a night scene with a lot of glowing bio-luminescent plants. That's my fault. But I figured that it must be possible to portray atmospheric perspective regardless of the type of scene.

I am really into Guild Wars 2 right now and the most amazing thing to me has been the new race they designed for this game, the Sylvari. They are a race of sentient plant beings who are not born but rather, awakened from a dream into the world by their mother, The Pale Tree. The Sylvari home city is a beautiful organic city grown about the roots of the Pale Tree herself, a beautiful, colossal splendor who flowers upward and towers above her children below. Every aspect of the Sylvari, from their bodies to their clothes to their city are grown in patterns that replicate the ways that plants really grow. The Sylvari even have bio-luminescence as a part of their bodies and as a part of their leafy/flowery hair.

In this scene, my warrior, Sanileia, is returning home to The Grove after a quest and pauses to gaze up at her mother, The Pale Tree, who glows gently in the dim evening while the fireflies and bio-luminescent plants light her path home.

This was a really fun composition to create. I paid close attention to the Rule of Thirds and placed my focal points at key intersections as much as possible. I wanted the eye to land first on Sanileia, and then to travel down the path to the arch and up toward the Pale Tree. I think I was successful in my execution of this plan.

I feel that my use of the traditional media could still be stronger. I am still not terribly skilled at laying down smooth graphite. The woodless pencil and battery eraser were immensely helpful to me in this as they were both really efficient for their purposes. I also used my kneaded eraser all over the place to pull out bits of graphite and leave highlights, and to smudge the cloudy sky. I also loved the bristol board for this composition as the erasing needed to complete this kind of work would have torn a lighter paper.

I did not exactly copy a screenshot from the game, but I included a screenshot that I used for reference so that the design of the character and the tree and the area I was portraying could all be clearly seen. I purposefully adjusted the composition to a more pleasing layout and I edited the landscape a bit to fit my needs as such. I didn't want to center Sanileia, so I could not create a screenshot that matched my composition (as the camera in game is fixed behind the player). I did not want to include the other Sylvari seen in the screenshot either because this composition was meant to focus on just Sanileia, The Grove, and The Pale Tree.

I certainly hope the effort and love I put into this work is evident!

***

I already got feedback from my instructor on how to improve it, but he didn't have as much to say about it as I had expected. I'm going to take his advice and improve it because I can totally see what he's talking about. It's not a lot of change tho. Just a bit of shifting values around to create better depth.

***

Art (c) Arsh Darksbane
All Rights Reserved.