Starry Night in the Fungal Forest
SHINE PROJECT
During my ambition project I taught myself a better digital painting workflow. With this newfound skill, my challenge for the Shine project was now to go outside my comfort zone and paint something I'm not used to painting, focusing more on designing worlds and environments. My goal was to design and paint a world, containing elements that make it unique, such as nature elements, architecture or creatures.
Process
Styleboard
I started by doing some research for what kinds of worlds I could make and creating a style board. Taking some inspiration from what I found online, I ended up with the following six possibilities.
1. Underwater world
2. Giant mushroom world
3. Fantasy jungle world
4. Sky island world
5. Psychedelic pumpkin world
6. Treehouse extravaganza
Out of these three possibilities, I liked the mushroom world, the pumpkin world and the treehouse extravaganza the most. I initially chose the pumpkin world, because I thought it would be the most original, and started sketching out some ideas.
Sketches
During my sketching phase, I got the feedback to also try to sketch out some pumpkin house ideas separately from the silhouette and composition sketches, which I did in the bottom-rightmost sketch. After a while however, I felt a little uninspired by the pumpkins. Everything associated with pumpkins seemed to be related to Halloween, but I didn't want to go for a Halloween-like mood. So next I started thinking about the other two options, the treehouse idea and the mushroom world idea. I first put together a reference board for myself to get more inspiration about different types of mushrooms and slime molds.
Next I made some more sketches of mushrooms, and I thought about how to combine this with the treehouse idea. I thought of making mushrooms into little houses, and I was also inspired by the inky cap mushroom.
After churning some small sketches trying out different compositions and mushroom designs, I started making some bigger composition sketches as well.
Then I narrowed it down to two composition sketches, and remembering the feedback I got before, I also drew a more detailed mushroom house.
I chose the rightmost sketch to continue with, and started digitalising it.
Digital Process
First I digitally sketched over my pencil sketch, and then I filled it in with the shadows.
Then I first roughly painted some colours in to get a feel for what I ultimately wanted to go for.
With that in mind, I started work on the colour layer. I first darkened the shadow layer, because I wanted to go for a high contrast painting with bright lights. After adjusting the values, I painted the colours in. Once the base colours were done, I added in the lights.
At this point I asked for some feedback, and I was told that the background looks a little empty, and that I could maybe add some stars or soft lights to add some depth. I followed this advice, and then got to the following result.
Reflection
Ambition Project Process
I was quite happy with my process during the ambition project. I broke up my project into small pieces and checked them off one by one like a large to-do list. My process of starting with small sketches and gradually making bigger and more detailed sketches also worked well, and so I used these strategies again for my Shine project.
When starting on the digital paintings of my ambition project, the workflow of starting with a shadow layer and gradually adding more layers adding more information to the painting proved to be the most effective. It made the process of painting easier and clearer, and it was a really nice way of keeping shadows, colours and lights separate. That way I was able to independently change all these different aspects of the painting without affecting the other layers. Since this was my favourite method of working for the ambition project, I decided to use this workflow again for the Shine project.
Despite the meticulous planning on my ambition project however, not everything went exactly according to said plan. I misestimated the amount of time certain steps would take, and my impression of how much time we would have to work on this project during school hours was off. As a result I had to spend a lot of extra time on it at home, and I felt like the workload could have been more evenly distributed. For the Shine project, I set the intention to get more work done earlier on in the process so as to not get so stressed out towards the end of the project.
Shine Project
Reviewing my painting and process
Looking back on my process, I'm mostly happy with the way I worked towards my final piece. I like how I experimented and sketched a lot before deciding on a final design, and I think it made sense for me to try to work with the workflow I liked the best during my ambition project. However, while working on the final piece, I unfortunately had to come to the conclusion that this workflow did not work well for a high-contrast artwork with a dark background such as this. That said, I don't regret trying this workflow, since I liked it a lot for portrait painting and I couldn't have known it wouldn't work for this without trying it. Furthermore, it did teach me that there might not be one workflow that works for everything, and that I'll have to try a different method the next time I do a painting like this.
Feedback
After finishing the final work, I received some feedback praising the use of light and colour. I was also told it's clear that I put a lot of time and thought into my work, and that the longer you look at the painting, the more you see. As a tip I also received some feedback on my attitude: that it would do me well to be less critical towards my own work.
Next time
What I would do differently next time, is try to more accurately assess what an appropriate size would be for a project such as this. It's unfortunate that despite my intentions after the ambition project, I again incorrectly estimated how much time I would have to work on this project. From the way the Shine exposition was hyped up prior to starting this project, I had gotten the impression that this had to be a big, impressive project where I would really be able to showcase my skills. However, in hindsight there was only about 1-1,5 hour every week that I was able to work at it during school hours. As a result, I had to spend a lot of extra time at home again working on it, most of which happened in the last two to three weeks before the deadline. Hopefully now that I've run into the same problem twice, I will now truly have learned from my mistakes and make a smaller project next time.
I think I may have also spent an excessive amount on planning and feedback during the first few weeks, it would perhaps have been better to draft a global planning and then get started right away. During the ambition project, having this large list of when to complete what tasks worked well for me, but somehow this time around it didn't. I noticed that there are more ebbs and flows in my way of working than having a consistent output of productivity, so there may not be much of a point to meticulously planning every tiny step. I think I will keep making todo-lists, but I'm no longer going to attach dates to all these steps.
Changes
There are no changes I still want to make in preparation of the Shine exposition. The painting is finished, I've already had everything printed, and I know how I'm going to be showcasing my work.
