Wizard Tower Breakdown

Here's an environment painting commission I finished recently, and I wanted to share a few tips related to it.

Hierarchy of focal points - regardless of the subject matter, try to have a clear order of focal points, most importantly a primary and secondary one. The focal points are literally just areas of the biggest contrast - and your main tools for creating contrast are values, shapes and color. Of course, there are more tools like edges, texture and such, but I think those 3 are the main ones. 

You can know if your focal points are working right by taking a little break from the painting and seeing where your eyes instinctively go at a first glance when you look at it again.

Atmospheric perspective and plans - when creating depth, overlapping plans (fore, mid and background) are one of your most powerful weapons. Atmospheric perspective is a pretty basic concept that enhances this depth - the faraway objects will be less contrasting value-wise, and in reality most often cooler. This doesn't mean you can't manipulate this concept to fit your mood intention - I had chosen an orange for the color of atmosphere in this painting, so all the trees that are far way fade into orange/yellow. The trees in the foreground are slightly more violet bluish (now that I look at it, they could have gone even more blue).  As a general rule, the foreground will tend to work better if it gets darker as well. 

Simplicity and intention in the sketch - it's very good to have the big ideas such as your focal points, plans and shapes figured out as early as possible. Here's the sketch that was chosen by the client, along with all the variations I did:

As you can see, I kept pretty true to the sketch, save for adding those lights coming from the doors and windows (something that the client liked on another color option and wanted added). It's a good idea to have the initial sketch open along with the rest of your references so you can zoom out from time to time and refer back to the sketch, to see if you've strayed too far away from the established basic read.

Hope that was useful :D