Rainbow's Art Realm

Haven't been yet myself, Deadvlei in Namibia has always been one of my dream destinations to travel to. Close to Sossusvlei, Deadvlei is a clay pan characterized by dark, dead camel thorn trees contrasted against the white pan floor. It is located in a valley between the sand dunes in the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. The contrast between the dark brown and pitch-black trees, bleached-white pans, rusty-red dunes, and deep blue sky is tremendous and sublime, making Deadvlei a paradise for photographers! Which is why I'm fascinated to draw it, as it easily inspires cool sci-fi, fantasy stories and settings in my head. The main image I based my artwork 𝑫𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒗𝒍𝒆𝒊 𝒂𝒕 𝑻𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 from is captured by wonderful photographer Luke Stackpoole @withluke on Instagram.

Depicting the dry, cracked desert effect of the white clay pan accurately and realistically was where I struggled with the most, because even with Procreate's industrial wasteland brush I had to draw the cracks and shades stroke by stroke, while repeatedly resizing the brush and altering its intensity.

The dark blue twilight sky wasn't hard to paint, but difficult to blend. There were up to six different shades of blue I was using and I had to blend all of them smoothly and effectively so that they resembled as close to a real night sky as possible. Because the twilight sky was an integral part of the whole landscape and atmosphere. Blending the deep dark cyan blue at the very top of the sky to the blue tone right below was most challenging and took much more time and effort than anticipated.

The lone dead camel thorn tree in the center was drawn from a different reference image than @withluke's photography, but its branches were also trickier to get right than they looked.

All in all, creating this artwork from reference images online was deceptively easy at a glance!