Some artwork starts with an emotion, an idea for a composition, a fondness for certain colours or simply the wish to create anything. This artwork started with a tree in a park nearby. Or rather its bark. --- Alt-text for the final artwork: Digital Art: Night scene of a beach with a broadleaf forest in the background, seen from the ocean. Big glowing yellow orbs are moving in a row toward a small path into the forest. They illuminate the blue and purple churning waters below, creating a slightly fog-like trail. (Alt texts for the other 7 images at the bottom of the post, in chronological order.) --- In 2017 I visited said park in search of patterns I could use as base for textures. This tree and the sadly rather unhealthy looking trunk provided me with one. At home I altered it into something more "even" in terms of value and surface structure and created a seamless pattern. I dabbled around with it a bit with filters, various brushes etc. once in a while. When I started my Huevember drawings, I erased the base "colour", so just the rough edged would remain. It reminded me a lot of rain... or waves? First idea with rain running down a window didn't really work out, so I moved on to "ocean". But "just water" seemed a bit dull. Maybe a scene in the ocean with the pattern as surface on the top? Maybe the river Styx with Charon on it, guiding souls as little lamps or orbs...? I worked on the Charon version for some while but it seemed a bit off and I felt I would need another photographic pattern for the boat as well, so they truly look like one single scene, not an art collage. I felt stuck. I set this project aside for a while. When I picked it up again after november had passed, I decided to focus less on a super fancy deep meaningful composition and more on the ocean itself. I took a step back and examined what the pattern was offering me, and then went from there. The boat was trashed but I kept the shiny orb concept. What to do with the background though? I still had no idea for that. I liked the thought of the orbs floating into a spooky cave, but I wanted to utilize that cloudy pattern in the back a bit more. This worked better with trees - and a beach. I was considering adding more detailed leaves to the trees or rocks at the beach, but I was concerned having details everywhere would come at a loss of depth, and distract too much from the orbs, so I went with a more subtle and simple design. And there you have it, this is how this piece of art came into existence. It's amazing how much an artwork can change in the process of creation, isn't it? Thanks for your inspirational pattern, tree! --- Btw, if you want to know how to make shiny orbs like this (or rather shiny creatures), have a look at this tutorial from Devin Elle Kurtz! Although I didn't follow it entirely, many steps still helped me make my floating orbs shine and look a bit more interesting. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoIkW3HDCMk/ --- Alt Texts for the remaining images in chronological order: 1) Photo: Tree with a broad tree trunk and several big branches. The trunk looks very unhealthy and slightly deformed, the bark is flaking off. 2) Photo: Closer look at the flaky tree bark with some bumps here and there, especially a big one at the bottom. 3) Altered grayscale version of the photo of the trunk, transformed into a seamless pattern. 4) Core pattern of the bark after reducing it to all the rough edges and scratches and delete all the midtones. 5) Pattern rotated by 90 degres and in light blue, on a mid blue background. It resembles churning waves. 6) Dark night scene with a dark blue and black "cloudy" filter pattern as base. The tree bark pattern was squeezed and added as foreground surface. On it is a very rough bland shape of an old wavy elegant row boat without passenger or paddle. 7) Digital artwork WIP: Water is like in the finished version, the floating orbs are still missing a part of their glow. In the back are the rough beginnings of cliffs with a cave.