clara-01 on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/clara-01/art/The-End-Of-Summer-634157093clara-01
Subscribe to unlock
Get exclusive content from clara-01, starting from $1/month.
Subscribe

Deviation Actions

Subscribers only
clara-01's avatar

The End Of Summer

By
Published:

Description

This is for :iconsharpenededge: 's September Challenge, The End of Summer

The end of summer for me, is the moment where the trees and the plants slowly fade away, and the animals prepare to sleep. Its a lonely period of the year, where one wishes more than anything to see once more the bright green leaves, the singing birds and and the animals full of life, and yet forget to enjoy it properly when this beautiful time do return. So its a bittersweet phase of life for me, and this picture is the closest thing that I can do to convey my sentiments when the end of summer announce itself.


This is mostly an experiment for me, where I tried various non-digital painting techniques to better my original photo-manipulation. You can see here how it started out:  First step by clara-01


I used a Smudge tool to merge the water reflections of the picture of the trees into the actual lake picture; afterwards, I passed the finished result (still awful) into Google's Nik Collection's incredible filters, and added three different types of filters: one to colour the blue lake into a corresponding orange-ochre hue, then another as an overall colour filter, and finally, a diffuse glow/blur-type filter.
Finally, in an afterthought, I decided to add a scratch filter, to give the picture that old, nostalgic look, and added a small old-feel decorative border.

I hope the result is good enough, considering I didn't succeed as well as I would have liked to merge seamlessly the lake picture with the forest/marsh picture. :)

Programs used: Serif Webplus (background removal, main assembly of layers, cutouts), GIMP (Smudge and Blur touch-up), Google Nik Collection's Color Efex Pro 4 (filters and border) & Analog Efex Pro 2 (scratches effects)

I wish to credit the following for their stock pictures that made this picture possible:

Lake: Austria Stock 37 by Malleni-Stock by :iconmalleni-stock:

Forest, marsh & sky: Beaches by Tumana-stock by :icontumana-stock:

Bright orange tree branch: Autumn leaves 2 STOCK by AStoKo  by :iconastoko:

Cloacked lady: Waterfall 7 by faestock  by :iconfaestock:

Water ripple: Water Effect Stock Pack by JSSanDA  by :iconjssanda:

Thank you to all of you. :)
Image size
3004x2000px 1.01 MB
© 2016 - 2024 clara-01

Explore more from clara-01!

See what else they've created.

Check Them Out