“Autumn Nights”

A surreal picture of an axe stuck in a tree stump. From it grows a branch with leaves. This creates a mystical atmosphere, which is intensified by the shining moon in the background. This African proverb fits the picture perfectly in my opinion: “The axe forgets but the tree remembers." - African Proverb

The original sketch

This picture was inspired by the current season. Autumn. The picture was created in October 2019. The trees lose their leaves. It is dark, yet colorful and mystical. Once again I have chosen the night as the time in the scene. I wanted to create a surreal situation that is both magical and beautiful. The next step was to find the matching pictures on Unsplash. All used pictures are shown below.

Matching pictures

After finding all the pictures, I spent a lot of time cutting out the branch with the leaves properly. The trunk was too straight at the bottom and I added a picture of roots. I liked that better. The most difficult part of the picture was the combining of branch and axe in a realistic way. Afterwards I had to paint the moonlight on the axe and the leaves by hand, that worked better than I thought.

Colors and atmosphere

After all picture snippets were in their place and all bright moonlight areas were drawn in, the color and the atmosphere in the picture were the focus of attention. The image was still too bright for me and I created a gradient plane, placed the bright spot over the moon and let the gradient become darker towards the lower left corner. After playing around a bit with HLS-controls and brightness/contrast, I was satisfied with the result.