PROCESS

The three paintings are shown successively: looking at the Qinling Mountains from a distance, going deep into the forest, entering the cave, and looking at the sacred trees of the Qinling Mountains from a close distance.

When painting the picture of entering the deep forest, I looked for the local legends and customs of the Qinling Mountains, and added some related sculptures to give people a sense of destruction, mystery and fear.

Legends about the Qinling Mountains:

• Humanities Village

Ancient village: An ancient mountain village, houses in the style of Ming and Qing dynasties are built on steep hillsides with mixed stones, the roads in the village are blue SLATE slopes, and many residential walls are mixed tomb bricks.

• Mystery and legend

Yin soldier legend: Jiagou according to Yin soldiers march road, there is the Northern Wei army missing legend of the southern and northern Dynasties, Mr. Qingfeng water said there are yellow spring waterfall and the earth is connected, you can hear the sound of horses hooves in the mountains.

• Climate characteristics

Some seasons are dangerous in the mountains, for example, autumn has been described as a dangerous season to enter the mountains, with strange phenomena such as shadow soldiers.

Then relate to the design of this position in the TV series:

Then I draw a picture:

This is a rough road map of the ultimate goal of the expedition to reach the "Sacred Tree of the Qinling Mountains" :

The ultimate goal in this area is to find the sacred trees of the Qinling Mountains hidden in caves deep in the forest. The book describes the sacred trees of the Qinling Mountains as follows:

In the book, the Sacred tree of the Qinling Mountains is described as a huge bronze tree, and the following is a specific description of its appearance:

• Overall shape: The shape of the whole copper column is like a big tree growing from the cracks in the stone, with full branches and straight and straight toward the sky.

• Height: Based on the comparison of the bronze branches found, Mr. Wu estimated that the entire bronze tree was about 70 or 80 meters high.

• Material: Made of bronze, exudes a simple and mysterious atmosphere, hard texture, well preserved through the years.

I checked the concept painting of the Qinling Mountain sacred tree painting by the crew and artists before the shooting of the TV series:

However, the original concept painting could not well interpret the concept of "bronze tree" proposed in the book, so I extracted the key words of ai painting:

ai, Key words: Bronze tree, cave, underground, giant tree

Covered in bronze, the tree has a blue-green color.

I drew this scene with a combination of TV concept art and AI painting:

Not satisfied with the overall atmosphere, I adjusted the tone again:

Finally, I wanted to enrich the picture according to some plots in the book, so I added the basilisk mentioned in the book and conducted research.

There are many monsters and historical figures in Nan's "Tomb Robbing Notes", although most of the descriptions are with virtual colors, but in reality and history, you can still find some traces of snakes, such as cockscomb snakes.

◆ Cockscomb snake

folklore

In the countryside of southeastern Hubei, there was a legend that a cockscomb snake could imitate a human voice.

Ancient history books

The earliest record of the cockscomb snake can be traced back to the Book of the Supernatural: "The cockscomb snake has a head like a rooster and a crown like a lid." One foot long, one inch in circumference. When a person dies, there is one in Kuaiji Mountain."

Grave robbing notes

"What is that? Rat?" I asked. The bottle path shook her head and looked gloomy. "It's a snake! It's a cockscomb snake."

Snake head like rooster head, long red crown, different body color, more than one foot long, neck thick about a few feet, also known as pheasant neck. The body is upright, but also can fly in the air, imitate the human voice, imitate the human voice, and the real human voice is very similar.

Realistic prototype

Suspected prototype 1: The tabby neck snake has a commonly known chicken neck color, and can raise its neck when disturbed or stimulated, which also seems to have a higher similarity with the legendary cockscomb snake "upright upper body".

Suspected prototype 2: The color-changing tree lizard has a body length of 10-12 cm and a tail length of about 30 cm, similar to the "one-foot long" cockscomb snake. In addition, its back has a handsome cockscomb ridge, so the common name is also called "cockscomb snake".