This latest piece continues my dive into folklore-inspired landscapes, using a rural backdrop to hold a quiet, unsettling moment. On the surface, it’s a familiar structure—a weathered wooden barn or outbuilding sitting at the edge of a field. But the narrative turns on the corner of that wall, where three pale, hooded figures stand in the shadows, peering past the wood toward a sudden burst of flame.
Technically, this was built using a tight mix of acrylic pens, Sakura gel pens, and Faber-Castell Pitt pens on cold press paper. I wanted the architecture and the field to feel heavily textured, using dense, directional strokes to capture the rough grain of the wooden siding and the dry, standing grass.
The atmospheric tension comes from the contrast in mark-making and color temperature. I used a stippling technique for the sky, layering blues, purples, and cool grays to give the canopy a vibrating, electric static. That cold background makes the hot oranges and yellows of the fire spill around the corner with real intensity, throwing the three specters into stark relief as they witness whatever is burning just out of sight.
Leaving the source of the fire and the identity of the observers open-ended is the core of the piece. It frames a moment of quiet intrusion—where the mundane rural landscape breaks open to reveal a ritual or a reckoning.
