Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Digital Dozen does Nature - Day 2: Savanna Lion

Nothing to Disclose

Yay! We've made it to...well, just to day 2 of Digital Dozen week...but it's still exciting! Yay! I've got another Nature inspired look to share with you today and while it didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped, I do like that I tackled a design I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle.

When I was brain storming for the week, I started contemplating different biomes and actually considered painting something from several different geographic regions through out the week (I might still!). The one that immediately jumped out at me was the savanna and decided I wanted to try painting a lion in his domain. One of my favorite nail art looks to date was my elephant mani and I so this is sort of an homage to that look...though I don't like this one quite as much ;)


I was inspired by this beautiful photo and did my best to recreate it, but the final product has morphed into something a little bit different. As with my elephant look, this became more painterly than I had planned (which is okay!), and gosh darn it, I wish I could figure out how to paint animal eyes! Just don't look at his eyes, okay? Okay! Unfortunately, I've been staring at this so long that all I see is the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz! :P


As you can see, this is definitely not a mani to be scrutinized under a macro lens.

I started with a gradient of light grey/blue to green to tan (which is hard to tell now) and then went right into attempting the lion. I did a basic outline of his face and body first and then added different shades of tan and yellow in an attempt to create the various colors of his fur. Tricky business! The eyes were the bane of my existence this evening and I sort of just gave up after a time. I added in the green and tan grass around him and on the other nails and finished it up with a top coat.


This whole look is much brighter than I was anticipating, but hopefully it's still somewhat recognizable as the savanna. How do you like these? What would you like to see from me for Nature week? Be sure to check out the inlinkz to see what the other ladies were up to for Day 2!

Happy Polishing :)