On this planet in No Man's Sky, I was struck by the way the yellow of the plants echoed the yellow of the sky. Dull gray rocks and pale brown dust were a backdrop to a place teeming with plant life. One of those plants was this strange flower that scattered blue light on the dust and strange red growths around it around it. I sought to contrast these growths against the straggly brown weeds and tree-sized yellow flowers in the distance.
This painting is an exploration of monotone painting and minimalism. I attempted to capture the forms of the tree, hill, and temple in few strokes and layers while still giving enough detail to create life in the scene.
The way this river snaked through two biomes caught my attention. To highlight the separation beyond just color, I painted the distant shapes loosely and paid particular attention to the perspective details and block forms in the nearby. Deep, saturated greens and browns support the foreground while lighter grays, reds, and yellows construct the background.
Through all of this, the river snakes through bleeding colors out of both sides and carrying them off around a bend.
This painting is an exploration of using a very limited pallete and wet on dry strokes on very rough paper. Except for some muted greens and browns, the piece is almost entirely monotone gray. The tooth of the paper provides texture in the distant stronghold and hills below. The foreground is a small pool and tree created with few strokes.
You start Red Dead Redemption 2 by looking for shelter from the cold. After a series of delays and challenges, you eventually make camp in a group of cabins.
The scene reminded me of the winter paintings Bob Ross would do on his show. While the technique he used doesn't work in watercolor, the things he'd say about composition and bringing life to a painting certainly do. I thought about that a lot during this painting.
Even though the scene is cold blue, I tried to capture yellow warmth from the sky. The cabin invites you in to make a fire and escape that cold while the cold and snow eventually fades away to spring.
This painting was an attempt to capture the spirit of a waterfall scene under a forest which I found in Minecraft. I used a slanted brush with chopping strokes to loosely block in the terrain and waterfalls. I wanted to create a feeling of flow down the painting while also capturing the abstract appearance of the game.
Gradients from wet on wet techniques in the cliff face suggest shadows and form. The waterfall used layers to suggest the water breaking and tumbling down. For the trees, I cut sponges into squares and quickly blocked in the cubic forms you see in Minecraft.
Wandering around Minecraft, I discovered a cave with a sapphire blue waterfall flowing into it. Deep in the cave, a secret waterfall connected to the stream. This scene was lit by a glowing orange lava fall right next to it. Bright, vibrant green plant life outside the cave gave way to dark stone inside.
Smooth, flowing gradients overlayed with wild, lush textures highlight the mix of flows as they cut through a jagged, blocky world. The golden spiral attempts to pull the viewer's eye into the cave and make them wonder what they might find inside.
When I landed on this planet, I was struck by the contrast of an empty icy wasteland against a summery cotton candy sky. The sky was a pale blue and filled with slanted clouds with highlights of pink and purple shadows. Below ice tundra stretched into the distance.
As I was painting, other spaceships would streak through the scene. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? I wanted to capture that idea without explicitly making the ships the subject of the painting so I placed three converging contrails in the painting to hint at the feeling.
When you play Minecraft in creative mode, you can fly around. If you get up into the sky and fly over steep terrain, the blocky landscape will create all these converging lines towards the center of the screen. While exploring this way, I found a place where a river cut through a mountain creating a small but steep gorge.
The convergent effect was highlighted here, and the river broke the scene up beautifully. When I set out to paint the scene, I wanted to capture the convergence without getting too specific about lines. So I loosely laid in strokes using a limited palette to mirror the visual style of Minecraft. Flat patches of grass, stone, and water in the distance I let stay loose and fade towards the edges to heighten the feeling of perspective.
When I landed on this planet in No Man's Sky, I was stunned by a dreamy pink sky. The landscape extended into the distance filled with purple and blue trees covering ocher hills. Clouds drifting by cast bluish shadows. I tried to loosely capture the elements of the scene to highlight the dreamy surrealism of the scene.
One of my earlier En Game Air paintings which encouraged me to keep exploring the concept. I really like the way the starship becomes a layer of landscape against the hills in the background. The greens of the starship and foreground grass contrast with the reds of the hills beyond. A yellow sky gives the whole thing an other-worldly quality. Still-smoldering rubble and red rocks strewn around the foreground break up the scene to give the composition more interest. Partially intact structures from the ship make you wonder what's waiting if you were to find your way inside.
