One of 2 recent illustrations I did for practice using techniques outlined by the amazing Feng Zhu. My subject matter was a moody forest, 2 characters and a temple of some sort.
Although I live an area of sunny winters without any snow I've always been fascinated by snow covered mountains. The snow/rock patterns and their value contrasts are something I really love...add a few drops of fantasy and this is what I got to... Happy New Year!
Exploration of new techniques can sometimes lead to satisfactory results, although, most of the time, they end up in the garbage folder. With this one I made heavy use of Photoshop's lasso tool in the initial stages and sticked to only two brushes throughout the entire painting process: a more textured one with opacity set to pressure and a round one with pressure set to size+opacity.
I wasn't quite satisfied with the outcome of the first Blue Abyss image so I started again from the same initial sketch and this is what I came up with. Even if it didn't improve I wanted to share this second experiment.