Danger at Sundown
by Daniel Eskridge
Title
Danger at Sundown
Artist
Daniel Eskridge
Medium
Digital Art - Digital Painting
Description
A man and a woman watch the sunset from a grassy hillside. They are dressed in light summer time clothes. It seems like what should be a romantic occasion, but something is amiss. They both look alertly in the direction of the sun, and the man grasps a gun. Something has caught their attention, something threatening.
There are perhaps millions of artworks featuring sunsets. It's an event that is usually romanticized as in the hero and heroin of a story "riding off into the sunset". I wanted to make a different kind of work though, a sunset with a sinister twist. After all, this is the time of day where the light begins to fail and the darkness of night approaches. I gave the man a gun to emphasize this, but I also used the word "sundown" in the title rather than "sunset" as it has a slightly different, less happy, connotation, the second half of the word being "down" as in descent, falling, or failing. It's like the day is breaking down.
I actually created this image to practice making clouds. It turns out that I perhaps made them a bit overly complex. Whereas my renders usually take around 12 hours, this one took a whopping 1280 hours. I actually started the render last summer had the computer work on it whenever I had some down time between other works.
To create this image, I started in program that specialized in making scenery called Vue by building the sunset sky then added the grassy hillside. Next I went into Poser to try and figure out what characters to add to the scene. For a while, I tried various animals but, in the end, decided that I wanted human figures in this artwork. After adding them to the scene, I rendered it using Vue. For post production, I used GIMP to enhance the colors, fixed details, and add my stamp.
Resources used:
Vue (for building outdoor scenes): http://www.IntrovertArtist.com/Vue
Poser (for posing pre-built characters): http://www.IntrovertArtist.com/Poser
Daz (a great place to get characters to use in Poser): http://www.IntrovertArtist.com/Daz
GIMP (an open source alternative to Photoshop): http://www.IntrovertArtist.com/Gimp
Thanks for looking!
Daniel Eskridge
Uploaded
January 22nd, 2015
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Viewed 6,436 Times - Last Visitor from Fairfield, CT on 03/29/2024 at 4:29 AM
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Comments (19)
Nikolyn McDonald
Gorgeous colors and fantastic details in this dramatic and mysterious scene. Congratulations on your 2nd place win in the recent juried Tell Me A Story contest.
Sydne Archambault
Congratulations Daniel "Danger At Sundown" an exquisite piece of art, won second spot in, 'Everything In moderation, Including Moderation's' contest, "Tell Me A Story"! Absolutely fantastic!
Pennie McCracken
Terrific image Daniel and such an interesting inside look as to how you created it. Really great work. v/f/pinned
Betty Denise
This is such an interesting take on a common subject! Bravo for thinking outside the box Daniel! L/F