Revendreth was my first ever time painting on canvas.
So why canvas? Up until now, my whole life I’d painted either on wooden panels or sheets of paper - and after over 20 years of doing that, I was ready for a change. So I picked up a pack of four cheap square canvasses (25x25cm) and chose the Shadowlands zone of Revendreth as my first ever canvas piece.
The initial idea.
As someone who basically collects screenshots in-game, like another person would collect badges - I decided a recent screenshot I took of the very top-left corner of Revendreth could make a very good painting. Taking in mind that I had never painted on canvas before, I was not sure what to expect but I decided what did I have to lose? I omitted the inclusion of my in-game avatar, mainly due to the fact that I usually get proportions on humanoid figures wrong - and wanted the piece to be as simple as I could make it.
Squash it up!
I soon realised that working on a square canvas was going to leave me with space difficulties due to the size and shape of the board. Nonetheless, I somewhat squashed the original screenshot up and left out a section of the wall in the foreground. This gave me the opportunity to focus more on the red and black anima swirls in the background. In hindsight, I realise that I could have made them more prominent like in the original screenshot, but I was happy with the progress so far.
An unhappy ending?
With all the hours I put into this piece, I’m not sure I will ever look at this piece and truly be happy with it. There were so many things that went very wrong with it (most to do with getting the colours correct) but it certainly is not one of the worst pieces I’ve ever completed. My favourite thing when I completed the piece was the bright anima swirls, but as I’ve looked at it a bit more - I believe my favourite thing about the piece is the ruined architecture. What I took from this piece was the confidence to paint upon a new material and to complete something in a style I had not attempted before.