Hello and welcome to my first digital painting in a LOOOOOOOONG time and my very biggest digital project forever and ever, so far.
I suppose this scene of weirdness may rise questions, and there's indeed a lot to say this time. But let's be consistent.

First off, this was a commission done within the Naturama Projekt 2013, which I learnt about entirely by accident, decided to participate in, and I'm awfully happy I did so. (More about Naturama also on the Official dA Naturama Group: https://www.deviantart.com/naturama-project )
The picture was done for Taranis ( Taranis-the-Bear on DA), who requested I'd paint his polar bear character Taranis. The setting and partially the plot were naturally his idea (frankly speaking, at first when he mentioned "polar bear" I imagined some magical winter night scenery under the northern lights, but he quite surprised me), he wanted something in the good old mad-scientist from the golden Tesla times tradition. After that my imagination ran quite wild. Well, you can't really mention Tesla without having me putting the classical Command-and-Conquer-like Tesla-spire-things in the center of the plot, I just love the way they look all too much, not to mention how much I love lightnings and voltaic arcs, etc. electrical magics. Of course, the peak of it all was when I came up with the weirdest idea "why not put a tiny black hole in there, in the middle of all those energy beams and stuff?". I love how that hole came out by the way. As for the beam-emitter-thing, the small ball-lightning beside the spire, the tungsten glass tubes to the right (of which the main function is to add a warm light source to match the blue electric radiance), or the physical basis of all that stuff, please, be polite and don't ask. Luckily, this is fantasy, so I DO NOT have to explain.

The rest is technical stuff.
I feel there is something external I have to mention. Prior to starting this picture I read a very good tutorial about values by *AlexTooth (thank you once more!), which made me think about some obvious aspects of drawing I had never considered so far. I reckon this will transfigure my entire art, starting with this piece. So I turned my drawing process slightly upside down this time, and I think it worked.

The rest is the usual - a lot of fun with details and lightnings, ESPECIALLY lightnings, some weirdness here and there (like the old-time steam engine hidden in the background, and the sci-fi, including StarWars-like, debris I couldn't help but add), A LOT of fun with lighting - n this aspect also some play and inventiveness with photoshop layer blending modes, which really helped getting the various colorful light effects. There's more I'd wish for, but there's no rush, next time better.


Done in Ps CS4 with a Wacom Intuos4 tablet.
Original size: 6000 x 3400 px in 300 dpi.

I had to replace my computer in the process because my old laptop couldn't handle the .psd file at the time it grew larger than 400 Mb (later it almost reached 600 Mb, I had like 100 layers with all sort of insane details, yeah, there's something wrong with me). Instead of optimizing the work, I decided I'd change the hardware.... Which was about time to be changed anyways though ;P

No references. Just studies, but they don't count :D
Textures for floor, walls, spire bases, all the metal stuff and SOME of the bear's clothing (more precisely boots and pants), all taken from CG Textures. Cuz they are free and they are damn good.


I guess that's all. I hope you'll enjoy it, guys. I spent this whole summer drawing it (along with doing 1 000 000 other things of course :D ).
Cheerz!