Golden Sky Mountain process

Now for a little insight into my latest piece. Lately I've been exploring photorealism with my landscapes. My work usually puts an emphasis on imagination, as simply observing and depicting reality can be a bit dry for me. However, the practice is fundamental to learn how to capture accurate form and light. Furthermore, it provides the fuel for the imagination. But this isn't mere practice for me, I'm greatly enjoying the process and creating personally meaningful art.

First, it starts with finding inspiration in nature and taking a bunch of photos. I regularly take drives around the countryside to seek out the perfect composition, often jumping fences and plunging into tick infested vegetation to do so. I used to go out just for my personal enjoyment of solitude and nature, but over the years this profound commune I have with the landscape has become a fundamental part of my artistic expression. This aspect of my art has been developing over time, most notably with my Native Grasslands Pixelminis series. However, hints of the Kansas landscape have always shined through in my work. Now I'm at a point I feel confident to do larger pieces in a realistic style. I'm pleased to share some of my favorite scenery in great clarity, and hope many can connect with this everywhere land I live in.

I pecked away at this piece for some 20+ hours. So, the process is quite laborious, but I'm confident I can become much more proficient at the technique. You can see I first blob out the entire composition and get settled on most of my colors. Then it's a matter of cleaning up the cluster work to bring the forms into greater definition little by little. While I closely follow the photo in terms of composition and lighting, much of the details are imagined in the cluster work, creating a synergy of what I see and what I think I should see. This results in an image that looks deceptively real, but is still obviously made of carefully placed pixels.

You can see my work environment in Photoshop. The reference is always visible to the side, I do not trace over it. As many of you probably know, having the navigator window open so you can always see the overall composition from a natural distance is a huge help, especially on larger pieces. I make my palette by sampling colors from the photo, and I apply adjustments if I feel the natural colors need a boost. I only made very minor tweaks to the overall saturation and brightness to the colors I sampled with this one.

Hope you like it! 

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