Hi folks, I kind of forgot to make this journal
before I posted the final result, but hey, if it interests ya (or indulges me, it might be either or both
), it should be posted! I didn't document my progress on the city part of this piece, so this will be a short one looking at the texture of the clouds, mostly.
Here's the first little image, that I had made earlier--It hardly changes from here! I wanted something really spiffy and futuristic, so those little flying things are there as skycars of some sort. Also, shiny domes. It's not the future without them.
Then I added the clouds. I'm a little sad I didn't capture this at an earlier stage, but as is, you can see things like the dark patch leading to the curl of the cloud (a shaded cloud, maybe? Don't ask where the shadows are coming from, artistic licence taken here to allow that part of the composition), and the sunlight making the lower clouds glow. The brightest part of this image is always at the end of the city street.
Big shadows! Not much to say here... I edited the colours the whole way through, but as little as possible. I think it's a good idea to enhance things as one goes about their work, but big changes are hard to work with unless it's fixing a problem.
The adjustments here were making the cloud warmer in the highlights, and bluer in the shadows. The whole thing was set back in space by the blue cast in earlier incarnations, but the new warmer highlights mean the cloud extends forwards into space (warm colours can appear to pop forwards into space towards the viewer, cool colours depress backwards into the canvas). All this adds up to mean the cloud doesn't end up as the background--it's here to state its presence with the city, regardless of how far away it actually is.
This concludes today's work in progress, and I guess the image is already on the gallery, so... enjoy!