Sketchquest Entry: Northern Lights Lately

Hey there creative folks and friends

This is my entry to the sketchquest drawing contest for January second run which is hosted by our dear friend @quatro from Drawaday Community. My drawing is inspired by the recent northern lights which suddenly had appeared in places where it is rarely witnessed. It has been my dream to see one in person. My cousin posted a few photos of the aurora lights he took on his IG. He is in Ireland at the moment for work and I learned that this is a rare phenomenon from where he stays. It is a combination of red and green lights which is such a magical and beautiful thing to behold. So inspiring that they became my inspiration for this entry.

Here is how I made my entry
First, I filled my digital canvas with colors trying to capture the red and green combination of the northern lights from my cousin's photos. (Later on these colors became bluish after I adjusted and corrected the colors.) This time I smoothened and blended the colors to achieve that airy and feathery effects of light in the sky. I do not usually do that for my scratch art.

I already know the image that I will be revealing which is a house with a nature background. This is not like my usual approach which leans heavily on my mood and the effect of colors on my vision. As you can see below, I started scratching the colors to form the shape of the house and the surrounding trees and bushes.

I realized that I need to keep the areas where the northern lights will be visible which is practically the upper part of the canvas. This is once again different from my usual style wherein I will scratch off almost all of the surface to reveal the black layer. What I did then is scratch off the images themselves like the trees making them all black. This is to prevent the whole composition from becoming just a line drawing. Normally when I scrape off the colors I try to make it clean leaving a solid negative black spaces. Today, I am experimenting on making the scraping a little rough on some areas and I like the result. The trees are now looking like shadows nicely framing my subject (the house).

The image below is already done at this point. The bushes on the foreground took a while to finish because they are a little detailed. For the finishing touches I added little dark clouds on the horizon then some sparkly dusts all over. At first the dusts look like snow so I had to change their size and spread them all throughout. The sky although filled with vibrant colors is looking rather flat and gloomy so I added the aforementioned dusts. There were stars initially but they are too small and insignificant to be noticed so I replaced them with dusts. It worked for me and I love it. The dusts muted the colors a bit and I like it.

I then added a filter which gave the image below this warm glow. It is giving me the northern lights more compared with the previous one. The red is more orange here and the green became teal and I like it as an alternative. I made some more adjustments until it all became bluish which I really love. That became my final choice as it made my art more bright and celestial although I lost the original red and green from the reference image but that is for the better.

It was a fun experience and I did not expect a result that is beautiful and bright as this final piece. Hope you enjoyed reading my post.

Scratch art, as the name suggests, involves etching or scratching away a surface to uncover a hidden image or design. It's an excellent avenue for experimenting with various colors and textures. Plus, it's a remarkably calming and therapeutic activity.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

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Sending you all my creative vibes.