Concept Art Study - Hunting Yoda

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I started this one not knowing what I was going to do.
I mixed some light colours and wetted the back the canvas with it and slowly added my blues, greens and some red into the white wet canvas doing single vertical lines, grouping some of them in compact bundles  I quickly started to look like I was making a dense forest scene.

I kept this process until I blocked some areas with well defined trees that resembled a mix of mangrove/sequoia tree forest . I mixed my blue green and red into a really dark value to block the bottom and sides. Then with the color mix I used for the trees, I added a yellow hue to lighten it in order to establish a glowing bottom. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but the more I looked at it, the more it started to look like the StarWars planet Dagobah.

So I went with that idea further and refined the trees,adding vines falling, roots and linking the bottom of the trees to the ground.
I felt, the scene needed a figure, I was tempted to make it Yoda, however, while I wanted a static figure, I thought Yoda would restrict the story too much to a static shot of yet another lonely day in yoda's life. Instead I opted with a tall hooded figure with a red lightsaber, a Dark Jedi, or Sith, or possibly Darth Vader himself.
As viewers, since we know yoda lives there on his own, we start wondering straight away who that figure could be and why is he there; was he there before, is he looking for yoda, is he another apprentice of the Emperor or Darth Vader... ?

I wasn't sure still if I wanted solid ground or that glowing marsh feel from the movie.
At this stage I needed to block the movement into one direction. From the picture bellow there are two gaps in the trees, this not only creates too much light and openness into what should be a closed a dark foreboding environment, it also distracts the eye as the viewer doesn't really know where to focus, going back and forth between the two gaps.

I decided to close the gap on the right side of the composition, creating a clear entry point into the background, and only one point for the eyes to focus on.
I added some glow into the light saber and yet more vines falling from the trees.
I decided to add some yellowish fog and a few highlights on the ground instead of deciding whether it should be solid or water. The fog extend into the roots of the trees and seems to create it's own light.
The viewer then doesn't really know what lies under, nothing is clearly defined here, the importance is on the rough shapes as opposed to the detains and the unease comes from the dark areas as well as from the brighter ones.

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