The making of a fantasy landscape...

I bought a graphics tablet a little more than a month ago, and I took to it enthusiastically despite my near-total lack of experience with drawing.

So far, I have mostly done quick sketches, but now I have decided to create something a little larger - a whole landscape.

The first image is a reference photo given to me by my father - it shows some mountains in (I think) the German part of the Alps.

The second is a fairly direct redrawing of the reference - my main reason for creating it was to show to my father that you can draw things like this much faster and more conveniently on the computer if you know how to do it (though he still isn't convinced... ).

The third image was created after two more hours of manipulation of the layers of the first picture, addition of some new layers, and some experimenting with various tools of GIMP. It shows the Blaustein, a mountain inhabited by faeries in the Siebenbund region of the fantasy world I am working on.

All in all, I am fairly happy with it - for a first try. I might even use it when I publish the setting as a PDF...


EDIT: Oh, and since this is my first stab at large-scale fantasy art, critiques are very much welcome!

The second one is very cool, but the first is very bottom-heavy balenc wise.

Meloncov said:

The second one is very cool, but the first is very bottom-heavy balenc wise.

Click to expand...

How so? Because the background mountains and the sky don't have as much detail?

That to some degree, but more so, that green is very saturated and as such, rather heavy. I'd either lighten it some or change the sky-to-ground ratio so that more sky is shown. Alternatively, some grey clouds might work too.