Life in the ice ring

Here's a quick little 5 x 7 painting that I did for Convergence.  A vintage "Rock and Ball" style spacescape.

Working quickly with my filbert brushes, I tried to get color in as many areas as possible.

As always with the Shaded Basecoat, you block in large areas of colors in order to establish that all important value pattern.  You can already see it emerging with the mountains in the foreground.

See the difference placing that dark color near the planet makes.  The atmosphere colors that once seemed so dark have become light!

Also, I am trying to be aware of color shifts.  Some areas are more reddish... others more towards green.

Now all major sections have been blocked in.  Value pattern established!

Further work will concentrate on those color shifts, creating a center of interest, value and edge contrasts, etc.

Lighter colors applied to the mountains start to bring them forward...

While on the planet, I use the "scumbling" technique with the filbert to create the clouds.  That is a drier brush, literally scrubbing the surface to make a softer effect.

Now for the ice chunks of the ring.  This planet is similar to one of the "shepherd" moons of Saturn, at the outer edge of the ring.

Some rudimentary shading applied to the chunks of ice.  They must not compete too much with the foreground, so the brightest colors and highest value contrasts will be focused there.

More development of those ice chunks.

As I continue to work on the ice chunks, I add some of the brightest highlights on the entire painting on the mountains...

That helps to bring them forward, and focus attention on those very hard edges, and extreme contrast in value.

Almost there!  More work on the ice chunks.

Finished!  Again, this was a quick study, a very small piece.  However, it is quite clear that the regular methods I use for painting my minis is the same in principle here.

Oh yes, I also used miniature paints for the whole thing! :-)