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Eye-of-Tichodroma — Priest of the Midnight Sun (detail)
#ancient #digitalart #fantasyart #fruit #lemons #mage #magician #man #midnightsun #musicinspired #pentagram #photomanipulation #priest #rite #ritual #rome #ruin #sun #tarot #temple #therion #sunpriest #tarotinspired
Published: 2019-06-30 14:53:55 +0000 UTC; Views: 1555; Favourites: 39; Downloads: 3
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Description
Just the upper half... as it was originally planned.Constructive criticism is always welcome!
Also on tumblr: tichodr0ma.tumblr.com/post/185…
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"But this doesn't look photorealistic! And it's so low-res!"
Yep. Both protections against AI scraping. Sadly it's necessary
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Model: Null-Entity
www.deviantart.com/null-entity…
Horns
pixabay.com/photos/longhorn-ca…
Fruit
(my stock)
Drops
stock.adobe.com/ch_de/images/f…
stock.adobe.com/ch_de/images/d…
stock.adobe.com/ch_de/images/m…
www.shutterstock.com/image-pho…
www.shutterstock.com/image-pho…
Crown
pixabay.com/photos/alone-altar…
www.deviantart.com/falln-stock…
Pentagram
pixabay.com/vectors/pagan-pent…
Toga
www.shutterstock.com/image-pho…
www.deviantart.com/je-stock/ar…
Staff
www.deviantart.com/cgartiste/a…
Facepaint
pixabay.com/photos/nepal-sadu-…
(and some painted stuff)
Background
pixabay.com/photos/temple-anti…
pixabay.com/photos/portugal-ev…
Sky
pixabay.com/photos/railroad-tr…
www.shutterstock.com/image-pho…
Crescent
pixabay.com/photos/moon-cresce…
Flowers
pixabay.com/photos/meadow-moun…
pixabay.com/photos/wildflower-…
pixabay.com/photos/lupine-natu…
Snakes
www.deviantart.com/markopolio-…
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Comments: 24
Hello I am from
I love this, I do love this a lot. The composition is sweet and the atmosphere is amazing.
The picture tells us clearly a story about a priest or a mage in some kind. Especially the amount of detailing you added in this piece is just amazing.
It's amazing how you put so many pictures together to create one. And it works fine. And the idea of the fruit on his horns <3 sweet.
Though I see some things you can work on. At first view, I didn't notice this. And it looked like a howl. Though at the moment I inspected your picture closer it became a bid noticeable that this was a photomanipulation.
And even if it is one it's a shame. Because you want to create an impression to people that this is an actual picture taken this way. And this is because the lighting is all over the place.
Also if you look at his arms, it's not that smooth and bumpy. This breaks a bid the purpose what you want to create. I don't know if you work with layer masks in Photoshop for creating pieces like these. Or just erase the background with an eraser. Though, Layermasks is an easy tool to learn. And you can mess up during the process and just add parts of the picture back easily 
As for the light critique. I can see you tried to create a light source from his staff. And honestly, that's very cool. Though you added the correct light sources on his body. Yet the background shows off the light from a differend direction.
This is something you can add Though the guy should have more backlight on his back. And not such a dark space. And this causes that the picture doesn't blend as well as you intended to.
I know with photo manipulations you are a bid stuck with the original light sources from a picture. But in a way, I think that's the challenge of this kind of art
Though no matter what it's an amazing piece <3 I do love it what you created and I hope you wil go on with creating amazing artworks like these!
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Hi and thanks for your feedback! I think I really need to get over my backlight obsession because it's causing problems to no end, in other works of mine as well
Yes, I use layer masks, non-destructive editing ftw
And thanks for your praise as well, I appreciate it!
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I don't think Backlight is a bad thing. Actually you can get pretty beautiful results with this c: But it can't harm to do some light studies about how backlight works.
Honestly, as beautiful I think it is. I also still struggle a lot with it to get to work in my artworks.
If it is causing you a lot of troubles it means you are learning it
But it's also fun to learn other things or in your case master it even better than you already do.
That's nice to learn that you use those. So you can edit it always to your wishes ^^ I know the first photo edit I ever did was just with an eraser because I didn't know what the heck a layer mask was xD
It's not like I do a lot of photo manipulation these days because I rater like to 2D paint my work. But I always am amazed at what people can create from existing pictures. It's a skill on his own tbh.
You are much welcome <3
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You're right, maybe I should just lean into it. I've added a backlighting effect to the picture the detail above is from btw, following your advice: Priest of the Midnight Sun
I used the eraser for a long time actually because I somehow didn't understand how masks worked. I'd always make backup layers in case I changed my mind... glad I finally learned how masks work, it's much easier this way.
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Damn yes! That's a bid what I tried to tell. This looks indeed already a bid better and more natural.
Wow, it's nice to see you actually did something with my feedback <3
Yeah, sometimes it's hard to learn new programmes and layer mask was a long time a big question from me too.
Until I had to use it for an internship. Then you just learn it. But it seems like you just learning on the road by just doing it.
That's a good thing c: Keep on going with your good work!
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very creative...everything mixes well...regards....David
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Wow!
This must have taken you a long long time!
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It did... I didn't look at the clock but it took much longer than my other Photoshop projects so far.
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Seems like it.
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Hello, providing a comment for project comment here.
To the positive comments, the picture is pretty well composed. The Priest is at the focal point of the image and the low angle gives him a sense of power. The shading/shadow also look about right. The figure looks pretty realistic, and there’s nice attention to detail. I particularly like how you can see the tendons and blood vessels under the priests skin and little bits of texture on his staff. So on a technical level I’d say that this is all very solid.
If I had to offer a criticism (and I think I do) it’d be in how everything comes together to produce an affect. I think the picture could look a little more striking. I also wonder if the priest would look more imposing and mysterious if he was backlit by the moon. Perhaps the colors could have a bit more contrast. Everything in the picture is very white. That may be the point, with everything being bathed in moonlight, but if that’s the case the perhaps you could make the difference between light and shadow more intense.
As a bit of an aside, religious figures can be a fun opportunity to throw in a lot of symbolic imagery to puzzle out,and it seems like there could be a bit of it here. There’s an opportunity to tell a story there, as you think about how everything ties in to a coherent system of dogmas and traditions. Here you have fruit on horns, peacock feathers and a pentagram, and I’m wondering what the idea is. Those things aren’t typically related to the moon, especially not in the Greco-Roman mythology, at least not as far as I’m aware. Background research into the subject might help you develop ideas for visual themes and motiffs. Not that you need to EMULATE an existing system of religious symbology, this is your art and its a blank canvass on that front, but you can use them as a reference point to build up your repertoire.
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Thanks for your critique! As for the tendons etc., this is a photomanipulation, so this is thanks to the model looking like that 
You're right to mention the religious symbolism. The symbolism is supposed to be solar, not lunar. He also has a golden crown with rays, golden arm bands - it was supposed to hint at the sun, thus also the title. In fact I wanted the whole thing to take place by day at first but the backlight in early versions would have turned everything into a silhouette and a blue sky clashed terribly with the priest's colours 
Thanks again, I really have to think about this sun/moon reversal.
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Hi and thanks for your critique! I am really flattered that you like my piece so much
If you want to know the background, I wrote a bit about how this picture came to be under the full piece (this is only a detail but I'm still not sure about the flowers on the ground in the full version so I submitted this detail first) - Priest of the Midnight Sun
Why is he wearing fruit on horns? Good question... "sun mage with citrus fruit on horns" was the image that popped in my head and that I started out with. It seemed like a cool image and a way to symbolize the power of the sun that hasn't been done to death yet. From that, one thing just came to the next. The mage turned into a priest. Then I thought, well if he's a priest he has to have a staff. And if he has a staff, he's obviously doing something ceremonial (I don't know what exactly tbh - I tried adding background people in the full picture but it looked crowded so I deleted them again). So if he's doing that, he should have some face paint. And a crown to show his authority. And so on.
Still, I can only speculate what he's doing here
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Sounds like a thought process I know well! I've made many pictures along a single idea that grow into something often better than I imagined. You can't always control what comes from a single idea, nor should you - My favorite art is made that way!
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This approach works best for me, the whole image unfolds from one initial idea, like a big tree growing from a seed
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