Project 1 - Cliff Dwelling

Most of my landscapes have almost always had a wide screen aspect ratio, so when I drew this a couple of months ago I wanted a taller image with a massive foreground element on one side.  I always start a painting with a neutral color in this case a desaturated brown then begin painting the sky and ground on separate layers.  I will block in general shapes then look at my light source and use the highlights and shadows to sculpt out the shape.  On my sketch I made a mesh guide  so i can get an idea of the shape before.  Slowly you build up a color pallet and the I just pull my colors from the painting.  I use texture brush and try to tighten my strokes.  About half way through I took the golden rectangle with the spiral that is in part of the doc sharing and overlayed it to look at my composition.  My original sketch and was laid out pretty good but with the golden rectangle I  nudged some things around and wrapped the cliff into the foreground.  I think it added an extra sense of depth and scale by having dwellings closer to the viewer and repeating objects into the image. -Matt Carey