"Blackrock Castle" - A Composition Study

The mighty Blackrock Castle sits high above Red Needle Rock. The imposing structure is said to be impregnable to any attack and functions as the kingdoms last resort in times of war.

Reflection/Project Relevance

This digital painting helped improve my craftsmanship understanding, particularly in regards of composition. Before starting the detailed painting I came up with a good composition first. The painting consists of the 3 major planes: Foreground, Mid-ground and Background. The viewers is supposed to be drawn to the Mid-ground and the "Needle Rock".

I therefore used dark value behind the red "Needle Rock" to let it stand out more. From a colour point of view "Needle Rock" also has the purest red in the painting and amplifies the effect further. The cliffs with their pointy peaks including the needle rock on the other hand all point towards "Blackrock Castle". This has been done deliberately to guide the viewer to said castle.

A further composition advice Feng Zhu gives in his tutorials is to darken the foreground in able to concentrate the focus further on the Mid-ground, which I did by darkening the foreground cliffs.

Painting Process Decisions

 The strong lighting from the top right corner is distracting the viewer from the overall image in my opinion. The cliffs/mountains are also still quite rough/sketchy, so I will try to improve these two aspects.

 I have now changed the main lighting source to a place on the horizon line.

Finally, some finishing touches on the castle and extra detail to the foreground is added.