Stairway to heaven

as the theme was to do with climbing a stairway to heaven linking in with pain I came up with the idea of a masonic themed piece where there is a eye with wings to resemble heaven with a staircase behind, from the eye there are tears which flood down the stairs and the top is that of a pyramid. The backing will be rays.

I started off by drawing out the wings, A simple vector animation.

I then shaded them in giving them a feather like effect.

To save time and make the image look a lot neater I simply replicated toe wing and reflected it to create two.

I then started on the eye and coloured it in in black and white.

After that was complete, I combine both the eye and wings together to make a bold piece which stood out.

The stairs were a bit of a pain bit I drew them out using 3 different brushes and thicknesses. 0.5 0.25 and 0.10.

I added depth at the corners of the stairs.

Then tied in the strokes to give a shaded edge effect.

Once done and coloured, I added the three images together to build up the illustration.

I added my first bit of colour, which was a golden pyramid top, and a sky blue for the tears running down the stairs.

I also completed a type which appeared as though it was a welcome mat to the staircase to heaven.

Something was still missing os I added a grey scale of rays shooting out from the centre of the eye and outlined the border in white.

Still unconfident I added a black behind the image just so it all stood out as one solid piece.

I am very happy with this illustration although I think the backing colour is essential in wether or not this illustration will be a success.