“Halo Island”

“Surrealism almost always uses contrasting color tones to bring out the literary contrast between the clashing ideas of reality and hallucination. The narrative is interspersed with dream-like sequences that revel in Surrealism in all its glory.” 

― Anonymous

The original sketch

This artwork is inspired by a work of
Paul Bond (@paulbondfineart) that I saw at Pinterest. He is an artist from Southern California. His art lives in the spaces between dream and reality. I very often get inspired by the works of other artists. My plan was to recreate an island floating in the sky over an ocean. The halo effect was not planned at the beginning and only came into my head while I was working on it, when I saw artworks by Nathalie Huijbers (@visualpotions).

Matching pictures

For this work, the search for images was really quick, as there are many matching ones on Unsplash. All pictures are linked below as always. Important to me at the beginning were the stone, which should float in the air and the sea, at the bottom of the picture. Then I looked for a suitable tree and a house, which I found very fast. The idea with the halo effect I got later, while I was working on it. For this I used an oil picture and made tracks with the brush. Later I added the moon, which should contribute to the atmosphere.

Colors and atmosphere

Then I color matched all pictures. The black level of the floating rock was still too dark, so I had to make the depths lighter. After inserting the colorful halo effect I added the implied reflection on the water surface. This was quick and easy with a copy of the color ring. After that I played around a bit with contrast and brightness. I absolutely wanted to get rid of the wavy light forms, whereby Florian Scurtu (@illuports) gave me a helpful tip. He is my favorite portrait photographer. I hope you like the artwork.