#rampike

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After a brief break from the nouns yesterday, we're back with what I would say is one of the more "useful" words that made the prompt list. In nothing else, this is almost certainly the most "October-appropriate" word so far.

Also, Fun Fact: There actually two trees in my yard that if they're not "rampikes" already, they probably will be in the future. It was a dark and stormy night (literally!) back in July, and around 3 or 4 in the morning, there was a massive CRACK of thunder—easily the loudest I've heard in my life—and I legitimately thought at the time that it felt like the lightning had struck our property specifically. Sure enough, the next day when we went outside, there were very visible scars scorched into the upper halves of two dizzyingly tall pine trees that stand together, like twins, in the backyard.

And believe it or not, that didn't really cross my mind when I picked this word out for the list. I did have the passing thought, "Oh hey I guess we kinda have one of those," and that was it! My main motivation for putting it on the list when I was going back through the word candidates I'd picked and making cuts was actually the spooky/October connections.

But hey, it made for a fun story! 🤗

As for the art: I kept things simple for today, but that was actually mostly unintentional for a change. But it does work out because (as I believe I mentioned yesterday) I have some other IRL things I'm having to balance today's Obscutober around. And I do kind of prefer having more simple results but feeling like I covered everything I wanted to vs. having a super detailed mandala where I'm still not sure I accomplished everything I wanted to.

I started with, of course, the split trees, because it was kind of essential they be included and be very prominent (at least in my book). The rest of the mandala was built around them; squiggles to represent the roots, a bit of grass-like representation near the base of the trees, then the larger triangles can either be more vegetation or maybe distant mountains—you decide!

I did pause for a moment after that, unsure of what to do with the empty space that was left and definitely did need something for filler.

Fortunately, the definition helped me out—I opted to do some swirls that are meant to be either wind or a representation of the storm clouds wind strong enough to break big, old trees would come with.

After that, the color scheme was easy. I went for mostly stormy blues, but also I tried to get kind of a lightning effect—but intentionally still abstract/loose—to highlight the splits in the trees, and I did let the tree trunks and the "grass" have touches of color just to help sell the imagery a bit better. It was at this stage that I decided I'd previously added too much hatching to the trees and the dotted triangle borders. Since I have a lot of thinner (white) lines here and was going for a stormy look, the extra white was just competing too hard for visual attention and made the whole thing look way more crowded than it actually is. You can see I left a little hatching on the trees for texture, but that's alk the hatching that survived.

...And that was it! And I don't feel like I really left anything out or missed anything! Unfortunately this is one of the words that I think maybe would have benefitted more from my usual mini-magnet shenanigans more than this mandala one. That's not to say I'm unhappy with how this art turned out—I like it a lot, actually! I just think the concept of broken trees brings out more of the poet in me than the artist, so I'm left wondering what I could've come up with in that other format that might have been deeper/had more substance to it.

Maybe that's something that could be properly explored at another time, but you Sparklers know how I am with hypothetical future projects like that. 😅 I'm going to focus on finishing what I've already started here first!

And I do think that finishes up what I wanted to tell you Sparklers about this piece today. Simple and more to-the point, which is kind of a nice change. They don't all need to be super complex!

So you Sparklers enjoy, and now I get to see how much trouble I have trying to do the cross-posting between those IRL things I mentioned working around. Somehow, I doubt that process will be as simple as the mandala itself was...🙃

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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