Traveller of the Realms

"After months of fruitless searching, she was finally nearing the end of her long, arduous journey. But would it truly be the end she wondered? The portal that would take her out of this forsaken realm was at last within reach, it's eerie glow visible from across the canyon. Just one more mountain to climb and she could leave this world behind her. The only question was, where would this portal take her? Home, where her heart ached to return and she could once again look upon the faces of those she loved, or would it strand her in yet another unknown realm, alone and forever wandering - a traveller of the realms. Oh, how she rued the day she scorned the warnings passed down through generations in her family and wished she had stayed far away from the stone circle in the woods."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I started this painting back in June as a practice piece. I'd taken one of my old experimental digital photography pieces and planned to use it as a backdrop of a new painting, just letting the colours and forms of the photograph inspire what the new image would become. It changed many, many times with the final result bearing absolutely no resemblance to the original photo inspiration other than in some of the colours used. Which is fine, because I'll just reuse that photo for some more paintings! Here's the photo I started with.

It's a photo I took a number of years ago of a Bismuth crystal pendant I made. For the fun of it, I kept moving the camera all over the place as I took the photo just to see what strange results I would get and then played around with the adjustment settings (exposure, contrast, highlights, etc.) on the computer until I got the result I liked the best. 

My intention was to turn it into a painting of a glacial city, but, as I worked on it, it turned into this. I'd still like to do a painting closer to my original idea someday, but I'm very happy with how this one turned out!

The figure in the painting is based off of a photograph by Armstreet (a fantasy garb company). I absolutely love how they stage and photograph their products and so asked them if it would be alright if I used them as reference images for my artwork and they were gracious enough to say yes! For this image, I used photographs from their 'Labyrinth' collection as reference/inspiration.

So, how do you like it?

Prints are available on ArtStation. New merch is also available on RedBubble. Subscriber-only merch is already available on the Patron Perks area of my author website.