Hendrik Gericke

First off, you have to do your prep work. It's easy to figure out the composition and general light balance in the early stages, so lots of thumbnail sketches are the order of the day. From the outset I work in photoshop, digital painting is a good tool as it allows a lot of freedom to change and rework without making a mess. From there you scale it up to the full resolution and begin refining it. The rest of it is basically round after round of tightening, making sure the eye flows across the space and to the correct points. It's essentially the same as an oil painting, but more premeditated.