So when I started painting this, I originally was painting along to an episode of Bob Ross (Not exactly following him, but it's relaxing sometimes to paint while I listen to Bob Ross paint, and I decided to try to do a nature scene in the Bob Ross "style".) I messed around with some turpentine and various paints for the sky and used a little metallic marker to make little stars, and I did the mountains in the background the "Bob Ross" way. I didn't know where I wanted to go with it for a while, so there it sat, but when I decided to turn it into some concept art for Titen (The game), I started adding stuff and I started laying on paint thicker and thicker until it had this sort of Van Gogh vibe going. The accidental side effect of the background being much more misty and thinly painted than the foreground gave it some really good atmospheric perspective, and really made it a good piece. All accidental, though! (mostly)

In terms of inspiration for the actual subject matter, Titen was an idea I had for an action RPG video game that would have taken place in a mystical, heavily Celtic inspired land. The player takes control of a little imp-like character named Edna, and they traverse the map finding ancient dungeons, making friends, and regaining memories of their past forgotten life, all the while battling large otherworldly beings called "Titens" which come from another world. The giant robot thing in this painting is one of those Titens, or at least, an avatar of him.

Titens are inspired by various ancient Celtic gods and mythical characters, and in general are mostly magical and not mechanical, but in short the other world they were trapped in was meant as a prison of sorts for them, and the various Titens all have various plans on how to break out of it. One of them, instead of physically breaking the barrier, decided to instead try to corrupt the minds of mortals in the northern city of tSualainn in the other world to build him a new body on the other side, which he could control, under the promise that he would protect them from their enemies. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it doesn't work out that way lol. This part of the game would have seen the player and their party trying to go about the city, unraveling the conspiracy of his manipulations, and eventually climbing up his mostly-completed body to try to stop him from being brought online. If that synopsis doesn't make it clear, the game was kinda meant to be like a mixture of some corrupted Celtic mythology with a dash of Undertale and two heaping tablespoons of Final Fantasy 7. In terms of gameplay, it was going to play like a mixture of Kingdom Hearts and Diablo.

There's some other concept art I have on here that I made for the game, and some even older stuff on my DeviantART that I didn't feel was worth uploading here. In the end, the concept was too ambitious for my feeble skills (As I am no good at programming) and I just kinda shelved it, and I work on it every once in a while in the hopes that some day I may be able to hire someone to do the parts I can't and finish the thing.

So, in short, I suppose my inspiration for this painting in particular was: Bob Ross, Van Gogh, Celtic stuff, and various video games from the late 90s to the 2010s.

Yes, I did base it off of that a bit! I love Van Gogh so much, he is one of my biggest inspirations. Fun fact, I started trying to do this as kind of a Bob Ross thing, but as it came together and I added the moon and the lamp posts, it all just kinda... came together the way that it did! I'm very happy with it!