Peter Mohrbacher

Matariel, Font of Life - (color phase)

Added 2019-02-21 16:00:02 +0000 UTC

I love working with earth tones. Part of me didn't want to jump into the colors on this too fast because I knew I wanted to get them just perfect. The longer I wait to add colorization to a scene, the more the underlying values contribute to their subtlety. The mixture of soft oranges in the transition from light to shadow is a sign that it's working properly. Having complimentary colors emerge in the cracks between values is exactly what I want to see when I start layering gradient maps and hard light layers on top of the painting. I use those colors to help define the final details of the painting, so having them begin to emerge when the painting is rough is essential.

I know I've been saying it a lot, but this painting makes me so happy to work on. I've been wanting to show Angels interacting with people for a long time now but I kept wanting to save it for the 3rd book. Having this painting come together lays the foundation to create many more. With creative work wrapping up on the first 2 books, I feel like I'm finally able to take these ideas seriously.

Book of Seraphim, here we come!