Laser Strike

Completed 2018-02-28. Available releases:

Direct Link

DeviantArt

Discord

Google+ (Archived)

"We have a confirmed mission kill on the tank, sir. There was some collat—"
"Superb. Will the laser have cooled by the next orbit?"
"Um, yes."

In case it's not obvious, an orbital laser ship, low in the sky, zapped a tank. Unfortunately, a house was in the way, so it got zapped too. The laser entered the rear of the house, and the top floor exploded backward from the thermal shock. The laser then blasted out the front of the house, but without as much kinetic damage, as the air had already been displaced (which is why the front of the building is still standing). The tank, of course, got melted, and maybe some ordnance blew up. The oil and fuel in the tank is still burning, as is the house, made of wood. In both cases, this produces an opaque column of smoke, thick and oily from all the fuel, lubricants, and wood, through which only a few stars are bright enough to twinkle, at the edges. There is a slight cross-breeze toward the house, especially affecting the fire on the remaining rooftop, plausibly produced by the rising hot air itself.

Collateral damage is, of-course, typical of armed conflict, and this image is somewhat of a response to my feelings about that. Wars are bad enough when they're killing combatants, but somehow civilians always end up dead too. Moreover, modern wars, between developed nations at least, are, despite claims to the contrary, not about ideologies or even really resources. They're about nations' leaders' egos. This explains why civil wars within developed nations are vanishingly rare in comparison to cross-nation wars.

I'm fairly satisfied with the smoke, especially on the house. I used a lot of pencil layers. The moonlight was a nice feature, and I think the tree came out okay. Light pouring out of the various holes in the house is lighting up the yard, and some of it even reflects back onto the exterior of the house, if you look carefully. I was initially going to put a dropped teddy bear in the lower right, where the line of the laser would continue, silhouetted by moonlight, to accentuate the human cost of war. However, I realized it was both redundant and would pull attention away from the flames.

Shinier surfaces get a small highlight area from the brightest light source, possibly a white gel pen, as-visible and -applicable, and also get whatever light is reflected onto them from their surroundings (in space, this is nothing, so black, but here you can see a bit of orange on the bottom of the barrel). Matte surfaces get far-wider highlights, more of their 'own' color, and a wider gradation from lit areas into shadow (which, I'm learning here, can be accomplished by shading over a base color with white and black pencils, respectively). You see this best on the ground here. Most materials are at least partially shiny, though, so usually they'll have at least some highlight.

In this particular case, there's a moonlit halo around the house. The detail is small enough that I can't draw the light-dark transition any wider, but I did go over it with a light eraser to make it less stand-outy than the gun barrel. Also of-note is the front of the house, which receives light, mostly reflected from the ground (the tank's oil fire is mostly occluded by smoke, although it does light the area around it).

Return to visual art listing.