Fairy kingdom's revenge

Final Update

So after some time thinking about  what story i wanted to tell, i realized i wanted it to be about confrontation: something like the world of the fairies, versus hours. So after some time reading and researching about it (mainly reading "A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales"), i found it: maybe a farmer that dared to disturb a fairy mound got unlucky, and so the fairies got their revenge. But i didn't want it to to be too dazzling(or the fairies to appear), 'cause I actually just wanted to show the aftermath of it, in a calm forest scene.

Mechanical pencil sketch:

Did a final thumbnail on pencil and paper (based on B&W thumbnails 9 and 3, and some of my initial sketches), then scanned it and did some color and light variatons.

There was a recurring shape in my sketches and thumbnails, that in my mind was supposed to be some kind of fairy bastion or fortress. Anyway, i wasted a lot of precious time drawing this thing and now i feel forced to upload it and/or include it in my work (I seriously didn't like feeling attached to a drawing during the concepting phase but well, I guess I'm just a rookie anyway!).

some black and white thumbnails to help me think more about the project's composition

Did a bunch of studies on irish iron age and medieval buildings(raths, burial mounds, castles, and blackhouses), because raths intially seemed to be important and related to fairy tales, but after researching a little bit, i discovered most irish fairy tales derived com celtic culture, and were recorded by early middle age monks. So knowing that, i tried studying architecture related to those periods(even if i dont know absolutely nothing about architecture).

So my initial idea for this project was creating a fairy kingdom (maybe a little like Tir na nÓg... like the contest briefing suggested...).  Then, like the beginning of any of my projects, i didn't have  any ideas, so i started taking pictures that i thoght could inspire me and sketched some of them.