Thumbnails - Room Of Roots

Late uploading them, but better late than never. 

Room Of Roots - Progression

Starting with a couple of dark green green lines, using the blocking brush, a few patterns that have been altered with the perspective and transform tool with some lighting.

Adding more blocked out areas around the canvas, I also began adding texture by laying a very light green textured brush over the dark lines then added thin lines to give a sense of structure, finishing with a dark textured brush over the top.

Filling out more around the canvas, increasing the lighting from the windows on the left and right as well as adding a dark textured brush to the wall behind the roots and vines.

After speaking with Photoshop Phil, I enlarged the size of the canvas, pinpointed the perspective point and altered the lighting on the stairway.

I began sketching and blocking out the structure around the centre piece.

I then flipped the image to see what was and wasn't woking, noting the right hand side is too dark.

Adding texture and lines to the structure around the centre piece, but also over it so I could blend it together better.

A lot of texture is placed over the top with a light tone in the upper left section, where I would later add a light source.

Finishing off most of the textures, I then began blocking out the background for the stone wall pattern.

Finally finishing off the textures, I then added a quick layer over the top, darken the edges and showing a predominate light source that highlights the centre piece more. Open to feedback, Kadeem, Freddie and Phil, all pointed out the lighting was too strong, covered too much area and the edges were too dark, losing the texture of the whole scene.

During the photoshop session, Phil helped me alter the layer that was obstructing the scene, changing the grey lighting to a grey blue. I reshaped some portions that had lost their structure when I was applying the texture, and created a new layer over the scene, but underneath the lighting. I unintentionally changed the layer from normal to colour dodge, and worked into it unaware. The colour dodge tool helped highlight sections without becoming too apparent. 

Room Of Roots - Edit

Altered the lighting by adding a bit blue to get a cooler feeling, added a bit more texture and used a colour dodge layer to highlight sections.

Final Piece - Room Of Roots

The first of my final pieces, the Room Of Roots. I'll most likely edit it after the photoshop session, but this is more or less finished in my eyes. I welcome any, and all, feedback and criticism.

Influence Map

Tower of Flint


"Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow."

Fuchsia's attic

Split in three rooms; the lumber room, the acting room and the 'secret attic'. The lumber room is filled with clutter, junk and the most iconic piece from this room is a broken piano. The acting is a very open, spacious room in which Fuchsia imagines characters to occupy the space. The 'secret attic' is where Fuchsia sleeps and keeps her most treasured items. She can also look out onto the city from the window.

The Hall Of Bright Carvings

This is where the top three pieces of work (sculptures) are put on display. It is quite dark as the occupier keeps the shutters down. It also has an emerald piece, that would appear to be the main object of interest. The sculptures are of wood. The hall itself is very large in size, as would need be with all of the art of the city contained inside.

The Room Of Roots

A room consisting of "a thousand branching, writhing, coiling, intertwining, diverging, converging, interlacing limb" like branches. The stems thickened at a converging tall, narrow aperture on the far side of the room. The upper half has a pouring grey, amorphous light. It is described as a "labyrinth", "writhing maze" and a network of weird arms that rose and fell, dipped and clawed, motionless yet alive with serpentine rhythms. 

This room is described, at first, as a room infested by plants with roots dominating the interior. However, the room is later reinforced to be a giant painting with immaculate detail. The giant painting also is strangely coloured.

The Great Kitchen


The Great Kitchen, is a part of the kitchen quarters that also contains the slaughter-house, the bakeries, the wine vaults and the underground network of the castle cellars. The Great Kitchen has a steaming, airless concentration, giving a sickening atmosphere that is only intensified by the sun's rays streaming through the high windows. The fires of the ovens, raging with the festivities, left the walls with moisture, that were built of grey slabs of stone. The Great Kitchen undergoes a constant flux of shifting figures with the momentary chaos .