Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Digital Dozen does Summer - Day 4: Sunset Glow on Half Dome Nail Art

Nothing to Disclose

Why yes, I am ridiculously behind on my Digital Dozen posts, thanks for noticing ;) I'm still playing catch up by I'm loving today's look so much that I don't want to take it off to do my Day 5 look! For anyone who has been to California and visited the awe-inspiring beauty of Yosemite Valley, this scene might look a little familiar...


When I think of summer, I think of Yosemite Valley. I grew up in California about 3 hours away from my favorite place on earth. Almost every year, my family (and another family we grew up with) go to Yosemite and camp for a week. I have such wonderful memories of our time in this valley including floating down the Merced river, hiking Half Dome - that giant piece of granite in the above picture! - and spending lazy days reading. Painting a Yosemite scene was one of my original ideas for this week...but I was so intimidated by it that I kept putting it off!


I mentioned in my Day 3 post that I really wanted to try and use black in my summer challenge manis so I decided to paint Half Dome at dusk, when the sun is no longer shining on the valley floor, but is still high enough to hit this iconic piece of granite "just right". We call this "the glow" and we make a point of riding our bikes out to the meadow to see it each visit. The picture I showed of Half Dome is actually one that I took back in May during our annual visit there.


I used 12 different acrylic paints for this look! It's hard to see, but I started with a gradient of blue to light blue for the background and then painted the outline of Half Dome with grey acrylic paints. I slowly added different shades of grey, tan and blonde to create the "glow" and the natural granite shades that you see. Then came the green of the pine trees way up on the mountain. Finally, I added in shadow of the pine trees in the foreground.


I am just so proud of how these turned out. I was really intimidated by this design and wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off. I'm also super excited I got to use black in my design again ;) What do you think of these? I'd love to hear! Be sure to check out the inlinkz below to see what everyone else did for day 4 :)

Happy Polishing!