The Lantern man is a ghost light.
So the idea behind what i wanted to achieve was give of a unsettling vibe. I loved the idea of the Lantern man being more of a decrepit ferryman with idea that Black Shuck's where his companions. Give the meaning to both a more sinister aura. I wanted to go with the heavy textured feel like an organically painted pieces. The hard part was creating a piece that was dark but not to dark so you cant see what is actually going on. Sometimes is scarier seeing exactly whats in front of you more than not being able to see anything.
With the river as you can see with the sketch is was never there to begin with. However the idea of the river dividing you from the three threats just watching you makes the piece have a more menacing factors to it.
This is when I started to shape my roughs into something tangible. I wanted to leave the characters to near the last phase, the reasoning was I wanted to give the environs its own potential story.
After working on the environment longer its still felt like there was no compositional draw. So the addition of the rob which later turned to the ribbons, draws the eyes towards the creepy trio. And this is when I put my nose to the grind stone not saving process steps... Ops I should record next time.
So the outcome, as you can see I changed the temperature of the image to shift to a colder muted theme than the dull warm colours. I also added the likes of "totems" or "warnings" to the ribbons to give the sense that this trio is very very old. Overall I'm happy with the piece I feel my environments are getting stronger, I also threw in another old myth in the background. Any ideas what it is? ;)
