Catch a Falling Star

This design is based on a stanza in a poem." The Sea, the Stars, the Belles" by Pablo Neruda "We need to sit on the rim of the well of darkness and fish for fallen light with patience." I used photoshop and stock images to create my 2D stanza interpretation. 

I began looking for pictures of a dark forest. I wanted to give a darker ambiance to the stanza and decided that because I was going to add a well I needed a clean surface- such as the dirt road- that would work well with the rest of my images. 

I realized that because the stanza brought up the idea of stars it would be a good idea to use a stock image of falling stars to make it seem like they could be caught. 

I placed the falling stars photo and make it the same length and width as the original forest background. I lowered the opacity on the picture to 45% which allowed me to give the illusion that the stars were falling throughout the sky.

I began adding the well to the background. Using a stock photo I used the lasso tool to make a freehand selection. I added and resized it into my background and used a soft light color on the well to enhance the ambiance of the design. 

Because the stanza dealt with the topic of fishing I decided to add a fisherman to the design that would be fishing for patience and stars out of the well. Again, I used the lasso tool to freehand the silhouette of the fisherman and his fishing pole. The fisherman was a deep purple color which I did not feel matched because the stars were already purple. Using the brush tool, I painted the fisherman and his pole black. 

After I was done, I was not content with the way the fisherman looked in relation to the stanza. The stanza expressed sitting on the rim of the well but my fisherman was standing. I decided to keep the fisherman's pole and find a new silhouette.  

I used a quick selection tool to outline the fisherman's body. The quick selection captured the black bottom of the stock image so I erased it using the eraser tool. I resized the image and placed him on the rim of the well. His legs obstructed the view of the well and it did not seem like he was actually fishing, so using the eraser tool again I erased his legs up until the point of his knee to give the illusion that he was sitting in the well. 

In the final piece I used a curve to make the image a little darker. I felt that the well was placed off to the side a little too much and cropped the design to be a little more square.