Illustration Friday - Star Gazing

Just a week or so ago, I created a piece for my portfolio that I called "The Stargazers." So, when I got my email on Friday containing this week's 'Illustration Friday' word I was pleasantly surprised. This week's word(s), by coincidence is "Star gazing." My already completed piece was a perfect fit.  There was just one problem - ever since I had completed the piece, in the back of my mind, I had this nagging dissatisfaction with the sky and the stars. I had gotten tired of working on it, and even though I wasn't completely happy with it, I called it complete and even put it up on my website. But when I saw this week's word, I decided I had to go back and redo the sky. I got completely re-energized and I'm so glad that I decided to tackle it again, because it turned out to be, in my opinion, so much better.

Besides not liking the sky's color and the arrangement of the stars and meteors, I was unhappy with the sky's oval shape. For comparison, you can see the original version on the left. In addition to repainting the sky, you might notice that I made some other changes as well. I decided to go with just one shooting star, I added a hint of the milky way in the sky, I added a cat in the background and I added additional shadows to the ground and figures. Those additional shadows that I created with Corel Painter's tinting brush, made a huge difference. In the original image, the characters and the grassy hill look like they are being lit by bright sunlight.  Adding a blue tint to the lower areas of the image unified the foreground with the sky and made the whole image appear more night-like.