RIFT Colossus Challenge- Life Elemental

Awww yeah, finally finished my concept piece for the Rift Colossus challenge. Though I wanted to do all six elementals (fire, water, earth, wind, life, and death) I have narrowed down to two that are more obscure and challenging to do and they are life and death. Life was rather hard to tackle because you do want it to look too much like earth and its kinda weird saying that I am killing someone with life damage. I figured life would be kind of like a cancerous vegetation growth that continues to grow till it over flows its boundaries much like the Yavimaya forest from the Magic the Gathering Series.

My inspiration for this piece is the Corpse Flower. How ironic that something that is used to depict a life elemental is named after something that is related to death! I wanted to throw together a piece about creation and destruction with the two elementals because they go hand in hand, neither one is stronger than the other. So here is my process leading up to the finished Life Elemental concept painting.

I first laid out the base color I will be using predominantly through the scene. I normally use purple and yellow as my color palette but this time I decided to go with blue and green since it fits with nature more. I will be using purple and yellow more in my death piece because purple is more unnatural and exudes a mysterious atmosphere.

I then gestured out the silhouette with the base tone that will make the creature pop up from the background. I chose a reddish purple because the corpse flowers have that violet red petal.

I then added in vegetation to the layer below all my subsequent layers since it will be pushed back by the flowers coming out the creatures body. I also went ahead and rendered in objects that will be pushed back like the arms and legs. I referenced bristlecone pine trees because they have that unique twist to the trunk along with the beautiful crevasses produced by its knots.

I then painted in the more prominent objects like the corpse flowers and the left arm which is larger.

I finished off the character concept with final details like the dots characteristic to corpse flowers, the teeth to enhance the fantastical quality of the creature as well as tweaked the saturation so that the creature will stand out from the environment I will be creating.

I blocked in the environment into two major portions, the sky and the ground. I used some texture brushes to indicated where trees are going to go.

I then refined the background further to get rid of the texture brush place holders and started working on aerial perspective. I refined the water fall since it is so far away in the background. I also used a but of Sfumato on the bushs in the background. I also saturated the foreground so that it stands out from the desaturated background.

Started to add in some palm trees.

Now I have to work in the foreground.

Then I add in final details.

And to finish off the piece, I tweak the saturation more so that I have a series of contrasting layer with darker colors, lighter colors, and darker colors to make my environment and creature stand apart from one another.

So that's it for my Life Elemental. The entire process took me about two days nonstop. Stay tuned for DEATH!!!