Winter

A friend of mine likes trees and winter, and I was just playing around recently trying to make trees with Illustrator (which, for me, is harder than I thought it would be!).  My biggest obstacle was that I always wanted to make them so symmetrical, or the branches didn't have enough twigs sprouting from it.  Finally, though, I made one that I liked, referencing a dead tree, though only slightly, since it now looks nothing like the photo I was looking at, simply because trying to make all the small little offshoots starts to make it look even more fake!  Less is more sometimes.  I had thought of making a cemetery scene, all spooky, but with the snow fall, I decided to make it winter (especially since that's what she was talking about in the first place!).  Besides, I love making snowflakes!  So I did the outlines in Illustrator, as well as the snowflakes and moon, and the coloring on the vertical rectangle and tree were put in using Photoshop (since I didn't originally connect the lines, making it appear more like I had inked it with a paintbrush).  A note, as well, on the lines, is that I love using India ink and those Japanese paintbrushes.  I originally played around with them in my first year of college, where I outlined these sort of abstract collages, and the neat part is it depends on how you hold the brush to determine the thickness of the lines.  I thought thick lines on the tree made it look painted, with that same method.  Anyway, it's sort of a bookmark.  I think it was successful, personally.