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Description
16 July 2011
Photoshop

This was a birthday present for my mom. It's a a remake of [link] (drawn when I was about 6). Those white blobs in the original were probably supposed to be rocks, but I got this great mental image of a flying turtle that I thought would be more interesting.

I think the title originally had to do with Dreamtime (the spirit world in native Australian religions), since animals with odd patterns on them make me think of tribal body paint. I also think sea turtles might dream about something like this, since they must see the sky when they come up to breathe and lay eggs, and they probably sometimes see other creatures swimming in the air.

The turtle is that odd tan color because the old version is more of a parchment-like color in real life. Some of the shapes of the shell and body plates are the same, and some I changed so they would look better or more "realistic" (if you can say that about something like this).

The clouds were probably the most fun, at least once I figured out how to use my brushes well. I've been using this set of cloud brushes [link] for over a year now, but I just recently figured out how to make the clouds look good. (I used the first brush at a large size when I wanted to make whisps or add detail to the shape of the clouds (including shading), and the "stroke" brushes to refine and smooth the shading. Base color is grey, shadows are blue-grey and highlights are very pale yellow.) I used the same brush to shade the turtle. I think those rays of light might be the first cloud brush, but very stretched out.

Disclaimer - because some people care about this, I figure I should mention that I got lazy with the base sketch and scribbled on top of a photo. Not bothering to link the photo because it's so loosely referenced that you wouldn't be able to tell what turtle photo it was, so I'm not infringing on anyone's copyright, at least by US law. It was pose reference, and I changed the angle and most of the pose later on.

Description
16 July 2011
Photoshop

This was a birthday present for my mom. It's a a remake of [link] (drawn when I was about 6). Those white blobs in the original were probably supposed to be rocks, but I got this great mental image of a flying turtle that I thought would be more interesting.

I think the title originally had to do with Dreamtime (the spirit world in native Australian religions), since animals with odd patterns on them make me think of tribal body paint. I also think sea turtles might dream about something like this, since they must see the sky when they come up to breathe and lay eggs, and they probably sometimes see other creatures swimming in the air.

The turtle is that odd tan color because the old version is more of a parchment-like color in real life. Some of the shapes of the shell and body plates are the same, and some I changed so they would look better or more "realistic" (if you can say that about something like this).

The clouds were probably the most fun, at least once I figured out how to use my brushes well. I've been using this set of cloud brushes [link] for over a year now, but I just recently figured out how to make the clouds look good. (I used the first brush at a large size when I wanted to make whisps or add detail to the shape of the clouds (including shading), and the "stroke" brushes to refine and smooth the shading. Base color is grey, shadows are blue-grey and highlights are very pale yellow.) I used the same brush to shade the turtle. I think those rays of light might be the first cloud brush, but very stretched out.

Disclaimer - because some people care about this, I figure I should mention that I got lazy with the base sketch and scribbled on top of a photo. Not bothering to link the photo because it's so loosely referenced that you wouldn't be able to tell what turtle photo it was, so I'm not infringing on anyone's copyright, at least by US law. It was pose reference, and I changed the angle and most of the pose later on.