Barovia Church - Behind the scenes (Patreon)

This was a really fun one to bring to life and ended up being a fairly straight forward painting. I had a lot of good reference for the description of the church...

The position of the church in the town... You can tell a lot about the shape and design of the roof from the map.

So I was in a good place to start with this one, with a lot of information already there for me. I knew I wanted to play up the run down nature of the exterior of the church, alluding to the chaos that is on the inside. The descriptions of scratch marks and gouges in the front doors was a very good place to start and I wanted these to stand out. But, I didn't want it to feel unused, it is still the place where the townspeople can gather for defense, and despite the many attacks, the church and its people still stand.

The first step is searching for good reference... I googled things like 'old/broken/abandoned church' and chose images that I thought evoked the story I wanted to tell with my artwork. I use this for tone/colour pallete/architectural reference/perspective. You can probably find architectural pieces I used from each of these images in my final piece.

Next up, I take the map into 3D and model up a basic render of the church..

I use this for lighting direction as much as for setting up the perspective and scale of the scene.

I had already done a version of the Barovia village, so from the players point of view, I wanted to make the 2 images cohesive and therefore using the same colour pallete is integral. The description of the church also mentions the castle Ravenloft looming over the church, and like in the image of Barovia village, I wanted to include this detail in the Church image too.

First I block in the colours and try to set up some basic lighting direction. This is a very quick step to just make sure everything is working in the image and the balance is correct. No detail is required.

I always try to make use of the rule of thirds in my images. I try to think where I want the viewers eye to go. In this image your eye is being led up the path to the door, following the lower left quadrant, then it is led up and to the right quadrant. The points of interest do not need to be placed exactly on one of the 4 inner points, but sticking to this kind of image balance definitely helps.

Slowly...add...detail. I go back to my reference every now and then to get architectural detail ideas for the church, and add little pieces here and there until I feel the complexity is enough. I also start with a big brush and large pieces of colour over the entire image and then slowly move to a smaller and smaller brush as I add more details.

I used several textures for the walls and roof tiles on the church to help speed up the detailing process. I resize the texture in the placement and perspective, and then overlay it with the colour. I usually then only turn it on 50% and paint back in details to hide the overt photography look of the texture.

The effects in this image were fairly straight forwards as well. I used a lot of the same or similar mist elements I detailed in the Vallaki town square breakdown. But I also added some rain elements to this one because the Barovia village painting had rain too. Lastly I added some god ray lighting effects to the windows and roof to make it obvious to the viewer/players that the church is occupied but also very run down.

et voila! I hope this was helpful. Let me know in the comments if there is anything else you would like to know about my process for next time.