With my piece 'Path To The Gothic Choir...', I wanted to create a picture inspired by one of my favorite 19th century painters, Caspard David Friedrich. I love his works on Eldena Abbey’s Ruins. He did a series of paintings on this subject and I love the haunting feeling conveyed. The original painting depicts a wintery scene, from a more distant point of view. I wanted to try something different and be closer to the monks and the ruins, feel more immersion and dive into this haunted setting.
I have done a lot of 3D during the last ten years but am now more attracted by 2D, as I have more control of my light, subtle details and the composition. I also love to work on a ‘mood’; not only the visual aspect of a picture but on what can grow from it and what it can create as a feeling. I like how Caspard D. says, ”The Artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.”
Firstly, it is always extremely important for me to figure out what will make up the composition! You can have great tones, great light and incredible textures, but if you don't have a good composition, your picture will stay weak. I always prefer to draw on paper before going onto CG. I put the main lines on the paper, search for some different angles and tweak the composition until I am satisfied. I also use documentation; you can still draw a tree without reference but it is better to look at pictures or walk outside and find an interesting way to stylize and make dynamic lines. Regarding architecture, there are a lot of references from the middle age, in Europe still intact. I took a lot of photographs when I was living there and I use this as inspiration and base textures to paint over.
Inspiration is something, but you cannot get properly inspired if you don’t see many pictures or if you don’t travel. I feel that you must work and see a lot, in order to become inspired.I chose to create a corridor to frame my composition and to have a point of view between a rock and an old wall so that the ruins are interesting, They let you break the lines as you want and there is never a straight line, too clean or perfect. I also chose to have a slope in the path so it wouldn't have a flat ground! This would have been really boring so I distorted it to get rid of the horizontal lines. I then started to compose in 3D to get a nice ‘model’. I used this only for the perspective but I then sent all the 3D to the garbage after having started on my layers in Photoshop.
