I don’t normally enter contests, but sometimes I shake off fear and go for it. If you never try, you will always lose….right? So, anyway when DAZ sent an email about a Sword and Sorcery render contest I was like….uhm guess I can’t ignore that since you know women, weapons, magic. Plus who owns like a gig of fantasy items? (Yeah, that would be me LOL!)

I brainstormed and worked on this art for 2 whole days…which is me being serious about making a picture. I made mood boards for inspiration, I read contest guidelines, and I dug through my massive collection. At the end of the day, nothing says “fantasy” or “sword and sorcery” to me more than a dragon…and a bad ass mage….and a magical portal.

I have 0 confidence I will win anything, but I can honestly say 2 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to make something this polished and put together looking. And *this* is what I was trying to do by learning compositing…the money I spent on the classes I took was well spent IMO because my art has come a long way. Sure I did OK before, a fake it till you can find someone to teach you type deal, but now I know how to effectively use a lot of the tools. I may never be a household name in art, but when I look back on my gallery of 13+ years of work I can honestly see the evolution. And I will continually push to try to improve my skills beyond what I even have now.

For this work, I rendered each item individually and mashed them together in Photoshop. Then I added my secret sauce of post work magic…which I’ve been trying to perfect.

If you are so inclined to give the entries a like, I’ve posted the official entries I listed on Twitter and Instagram in this post.

PS: If you want to see all my links on my shiny link site visit here: https://sleek.bio/shannonmcroberts