Secret Garden Door

I knew what I wanted to achieve the minute I saw this picture from Johanna Basford's Secret Garden, the question was how. I left it and did other projects until I gained enough confidence and curiosity to attack it. I had my Colleen pencils beside me and the rest of the day to color, so I began.

It took me two days to finish this. I started with purple, red, brown, green, light green, even yellow I believe for the door. I thought I'd highlight a part so I left it white while I was doing the coloring only to realize when I was done that it made no sense to highlight that part. I should've highlighted the lock of the door instead of that meaningless part. Haha! I just laughed at myself and the bungle and went on.

I had a peg from the internet which I will not show here since I can't attribute it (note to self: I should take note of where I take the photos from so I can always include them in the blog if I need to). The photo that isn't here also shows an enchanted door that's recessed amidst leaves and branches, in the middle of the forest. I studied it closely until my eyes popped out. My brain was going at 100 GB per millisecond trying to decipher the colors in the photo that I could render on this image.

And just like that, ting!, I realized that blue was what created the 'glow'. I took a light blue pencil hoping it would do the trick. Violet was what I used as shadow to contrast.

Here I decided to introduce colors on the 'floor' though there was none on the original image.

While I was coloring the leaves with violet and blue shades I worked as if essentially all of them were green anyway. That the blues and purples were only the enchanted effect caused by the 'glow'. That's why some leaves would be fading from blue to violet to green.

To complete the image I made a pointilism background using black pencil. I wanted the background to be muted and recessed.

Those who appreciated the effects of my coloring pointed out how looking at this seemed to suck them from the outside and into the center of this picture. I'm happy they that this work generates that feeling, that's exactly what I wanted to achieve.

The foreground colors were black and brown.