I'm finally working on a new illustration! (I say finally, but it hasn't REALLY been that long since my last one.) I had a bit of a dip in productivity since my last painting, probably because I didn't actually have anything planned for my next one. 

This painting has transformed so much along the way and I'm kinda okay with that because its been quite fun/interesting. My original 'plan' was to illustrate a cool looking centaur from Narnia. I actually think about Narnia a lot in my spare time (what a nerd). I love the overall 'look' designed for the film so my redesigns are never really out of anger for the way they did it, but when I think about it more I like to challenge some of the creatures 'cultural background' so to speak.

Narnia has a close link to England and English culture in my opinion since English people were present during the creation and an English human couple were the first King and Queen of Narnia so I feel English themes would run quite deep through Narnia. Although, this considered, not all the creatures (notably the centaurs) were present during the creation and must have been created later on by Aslan. So this means (in my head) that they'd create their own culture and it wouldn't necessarily look English. HENCE my new illustration featuring a Centaur!

I wanted my new illustration to feature some landscape and some focus on characters, so the battle against the White Witch seemed ideal to paint.

I looked for some really strong reference to work from, especially for lighting and mood so I looked at some of Albert Bierstadt and the painting above seemed ideal! 

Some of my previous studies helped me to work on applying colour scheme and lighting to my own work so they were useful! My painting isn't quite as saturated as this one and I'm not sure whether its going to be, but it's been really helpful in getting the painting started!

I'm also encouraging myself to keep working on the overall feeling and impression before I dive into details but its getting more and more tedious so I may snap soon...

I've got a busy few days ahead of me because I'm FINALLY going to be moving into our new house for uni so I may not get chance to work on this for a few days (which may actually be a good thing in terms of fresh eyes etc).