The Cthulhu expedition

Here's the final render of my work! I touched up all the rough parts and added a few more details! Even though I started with photo-bashing, I paint over everything to give make it look more organic and hand painted. 
Hope you guys liked it! :) 

I've added more details and changed up the lighting to have some color variations other than just blue. I've also corrected some of the perspective. Don't be afraid to scrap certain things if you find that it's not working even though you've spent hours on it. 

Thumbnail Sketches

I always start with thumbnail sketches to get a rough idea of what the composition will be.
I like sketching on actual paper because it feels more organic and stops me from focusing on too much cleanup and trying to make it perfect. Starting digitally makes it easy to get carried away. 

After sketching, I block out a basic grey-scale of the composition to get a feel of the mood and lighting.

From there I look for images on google to start and start photo bashing.

It looks strange and like a magazine collage at first so I tweak everything to make the image look a little more cohesive.

I wanted the expedition to be at night so I tweaked the entire image to make it look darker. I also played with the colour balance to make the images look more cohesive. From here, it's easier to start painting over the images. I usually like to start with making sure the lighting is correct before rendering even further.

Here is my first pass. Very rough but it's got the basic elements down. From here I just have to render and clean up and add any other detail I want.