Painted as a project for My Painting Environments class: https://skl.sh/32Khrti
I am studying and working on my environment paintings, focusing on building textures and painting with light. This was submitted as my project for a Painting Environments course. If you have any advise, tips or comments on this painting I would love to hear from you. Thanks!
Epic Valley Project parameters:
- Hugh, expansive valley with mix of grassy and rocky terrain
- Haunting, dramatic sky with rays of light beaming
- Stone formations
It’s a work in progress, I haven’t started on shadowing yet. The armor overall is Mark V, but the helmet is Mark IV. Inspiration for this came from how 343 mentioned Halo Infinite will be taking a lot of stuff from Halo Combat Evolved, which has been my favorite. With a little anime mixed in as the face. My favorite part about this so far is the whole ‘exploration/unknown’ aspect, since Halo CE levels were pretty big and fun to look around. And the landscapes especially inspired this, showing just how much is out there.
I finished this drawing a day after I hiked to the top of the rocks, I did this during spring break this year in 2018. (Drawing is 6x4 inches in size. ) TIME: 1 hour 20 minutes
This piece began as a multi-colored abstract . . . but it was nowhere . . . nothing . . . and had no essence. So, I tried to take it in the direction of a landscape . . . and that was horrible. I gave the entire piece a whitewash using a white acrylic paint pen. And then the idea popped into my head to Doodle over the colored background. The title reflects the fact that the piece only came to life with the addition of the Doodles . . .
Against the weight of a storm-dark sky, tender stems lean forward—some bending, some breaking, some still reaching.
They hold their fire at the tips, waiting to bloom, waiting to burn, waiting to belong to light.
Perhaps this is all of us:
stretching through shadows,
searching for the thin, golden line that divides earth from eternity.
This is no landscape you could ever stand in.
No observational drawing, no safe horizon line.
This chalk experiment is a dream unfolding in color: a golden field lit from within, a scarlet seam of fire at its edge, and a storm-heavy sky pressing down with ancient weight.
It feels like a place between worlds—where the conscious and unconscious meet, where memory and imagination blur. Some might see a battlefield, others a meadow after rain, and still others a veil between life and death. That is the beauty: the painting does not tell you what it is; it invites you to confess what you see.
Psychologists say we project ourselves onto images like these. So—what do you notice first? The light? The darkness? The burning red?
Perhaps that is not about the drawing at all, but about you.
Warm and cool winds mixing and blowing over sand ridges. A memory from living on the edge of a desert in Western Australia. Sometimes, walking the early morning the air is still cool in the shade of the trees, but the moment you step out into the sun, it is already hot.
