"Leviathan": working steps

Gigantic monsters aren't my usual, but the open mouth of a ship-eating leviathan popped into my head with chilling clarity. Or so I thought before I put the stylus to the tablet ;)


I sketched some thumbnails in Painter to compare view points. As usual, I chose the composition of one and the lighting of another and went to work with colour.

 

For colour blocking, I use the largest brush possible and set it to colour jitter. I chose a colour scheme of almost complementary fleshy pink and sea blue, and fixed the position of some tentacles so that they are better balanced throughout the picture.

I centralized the mouth and used several ragged brushes and spattery airbrushes in Painter. References were used for the ship and waves.

I finally moved the thing into Photoshop, and used Images>Adjustments>Variations to further enhance the atmospheric effect.