Nieva’s journey continues - as does mine. I am using a variety of skills as this project goes along. For this illustration I imported the original photo into my ancient version of Photoshop and applied some filters to make it look stormy. I haven’t done a lot in Photoshop, but the effect was kind of what I was after.
I’ve been using the “Pro” mode on my phone to take the photos and it works really well to adjust lighting, colors and exposure. The really tricky part is getting the focus right. I have lost count of the number of photos I’ve discarded because the important things are not in focus.
Setting up the shelter cave
The next part of Nieva’s journey has the travelers sheltering from the storm in a cave. This entailed bringing a lot more stones in from the garden to create a big cave. (Much eye rolling from my husband of course! Lol!) I also oil pasteled a bit more rock background. I used some fabric for the ground of the cave and added some moss to the rocks near the cave entrance. Lighting the cave was tricky, but I had already tried using a flashlight and orange film to create a yellow glow when I first made my little campfire, so this worked for the illustration here and created some cool shadows on the cave walls. I photographed several scenes in this cave, including some for later in the story, so I got pretty good use out of my rocks and backdrop.
One of the finished scenes
Naughty Rime has been chewing his pack. Nieva will have to do some repairs.
At the back of this shelter cave is a tunnel. This is the gateway to the world of the Merfolk. Yes, there are mermaids in my story - and a fairy and a dragon! But shhhh, don’t tell anyone, it’s a surprise. ;) So, now on to building a fabulous mermaid cavern…..