Gothic Ruin

[Image ID] A landscape orientated digital painting. A flight of stone steps leads up to a 3-arched entrance into a Gothic ruin. There are carved standing stones in the grass both sides of the flight of steps. [description end]

This painting was featured in:

•  ‘Made in Peterborough’ exhibition at Peterborough cathedral in February 2024
•  Peterborough Art Society's Summer Exhibition in June 2024.

I haven’t done many landscapes digitally, despite always liking those I’ve seen painted by other people, and this piece was a first step towards doing digital paintings of landscapes more regularly. As I worked on this piece I was surprised to realise that the process of doing the painting was actually much the same as how I approach my usual digital paintings of characters.

Gothic is one of my favourite styles of architecture, so that definitely influenced my choice to make it part of this painting. It is also a somewhat familiar subject as, although I had only loosely used it in the backgrounds of paintings until now, I have often sketched gothic style buildings whilst developing the world for my story (Candle of Ice).

One thing I did do differently in this painting is that I started with a yellow and pink gradient as the background behind my sketch rather than the grey I usually use. This decision came about because I had a very strong mental image of the ruined arches lit up in a yellow and pink light before I even started the sketch so I put that colour down first so I wouldn’t forget if I didn’t work on the sketch for a while.

I’ve also uploaded a timelapse of the painting process to YouTube, click the video below to watch it.

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Time taken: 3 hours

Computer Type: Windows

Program: FireAlpaca

Drawing Tablet: Gaomon M106K

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Artwork ©Dragonsflyatsunset 2024, all rights reserved.