Every now and then the bleak, desolate corner of my mind compels me to paint scenes like this. Is it symptomatic of something I need to address, or am I just being melodramatic? It started life as another scene from The Silmarillion; Fingolfin challenging Melkor to single combat at the gates of Angband, but I couldn't resist painting in those imperial eagles. I'm not sure Manwe would approve of that!
Here's a wonderful piece of music from the late, great Jerry Goldsmith that I had on a loop while I worked [link] Its superb. And another fav from Hellboy II [link]
Good sense of space and volume, nice shading and details. Some brush strokes are easy and pretty "sketchy", but on the whole picture looks very real because of your high skills. It seems, you know, which details must be drawn more narrowly and which details can be just skipped.