Painting Battle at Hell’s Gate

by Richard Ong

Phase One: Traditional

I started this artwork with the usual pencil and pen rendering to provide structure, as I did with most of my paintings before using acrylic inks (Daler-Rowney FW; Liquitex) to flesh out the action scenes.

I started painting the blood-coloured background using 90% flame red and 10% burnt umber; then I added the flames using yellow as the first layer before adding the highlights on the edge using a mixture of flame orange over yellow.

The pillars on each side were given a shade of jade green using a mixture of 90% emerald green and 10% burnt umber. The serpents were painted with 35% crimson and 75% flame red. The gargoyles above the serpents are a mixture of 70% burnt umber, 30% flame red with grey highlights layered on top.

The chalice sword hilt was painted with iridescent bright gold. The tanned flesh tone of the warrior angel is a mixture of 60% flesh tint with some raw sienna, burnt umber and naphthol crimson. The angel’s hair is coloured with cerulean blue.

Phase Two: Digital

The scanned image was further enhanced using Photoshop by providing a certain vibrance to the painting with minute adjustments made to shadows and highlights until I got the desired effect of a glowing fire, softer skin tone and reflected light off the skin.

PhotoStudio was used to lower the gamma level and raise the saturation to enrich the dominant colour. A photo editing tool called, Repix, was used to add the yellow and red flares effect on the angel’s left hand overlapping the fireball.

Finally, I used Photoshop once more to shine the lens flares off the wrist bands and on one of the red jewels that adorn the chalice sword hilt.