Sunrise

This morning I got up far earlier than normal - at the shocking time of 7 AM! (Yep, I've been spoiled these past few years, what with my 9 AM wake-up call.)

Basically, I went and hung around a cold apartment while men drilled and scraped and generally fixed up terrible water damage behind me. Fun? I used the time to work on my digital painting a bit, using the wonderful new computer I lugged down the hill. (Lugging it back up was worse.)

I spent quite a bit of time simply reacquainting myself with my Photoshop brushes (including some extra ones, such as this brush pack by DanLuVisiArt that I really need to work with more), before using a few brushes from the aforementioned pack to recreate this photo (by "Michael from Minnesota"):

Isn't it gorgeous? I had a lot of fun recreating it, but I have a lot to learn (and work on) still. Below is my rendition, achieved by painting over the original until none of it was visible anymore. (Click to enlarge!)

The clouds, in particular, need more work (or just more effort - I slapped those down first, so they're the roughest part of the painting), but apart from those, I'm really pleased with the result. I'll do more such paintings in the future, I think - copying really helps you learn how to create something realistic and apply that new knowledge to other paintings!

But seriously, those colors... *sighs happily*