Cosmic Creations | CUPID: A Beginner's Archer

Hello fellow Aliens!

I'm excited to present my entry for the Cosmic Creation Edition with the theme of MYTHOLOGY, hosted by @alienarthive.

After seeing so many wonderful participants from the community, I decided to join in and chose CUPID as my focus. Cupid, often depicted as a godly child with wings and a bow, aiming arrows at people to make them fall in love, has always intrigued me. But what happens when Cupid misses the mark?

In my work, I've portrayed a young and inexperienced Cupid, awkwardly navigating his arrows. Unlike other skilled archers who effortlessly hit the heart with their arrows, this young Cupid is still learning the ropes and stumbling through the art of matchmaking.

I crafted this design using Adobe Photoshop, utilizing various image sources. I've provided the sources at the end of my blog for reference.

Each element in my design starts with cutting out the necessary objects like Cupid, the bow, arrows, and the surrounding landscape, including the flower field and starry sky.

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I aimed to create the atmosphere of a fresh morning sunrise, with warm light enveloping the scene. To achieve this, I added lens flare effects and adjusted the lighting to create realistic shadows.

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After creating the lensflare, I set up the lighting, such as how the light is reflected when it hits the object and the shadows created by the light effect. Here I added a little light using the brush tool on the back of the stone, the cupid's wings, and the shadows on his feet. not forgetting I gave color to cupid's eyes.

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After completing the lighting effects, I duplicated the arrows to convey the impression that Cupid has made many mistakes in his shots, with even his bowstring broken.

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Next, I added dazzling light effects and a hint of morning mist. For the light effects, I used Angle gradients adjusted with the eraser tool. As for the mist effect, I used the render difference cloud effect, then adjusted the layer mode to screen and refined it with the brush tool.

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Before saving the final design, I made sure to fine-tune the lighting adjustments using curves for sharper contrast.

That wraps up my creation for this COSMIC CREATION challenge. I hope you enjoy my work. If you're interested in participating in this challenge, you can follow along and read all the rules here, Cosmic Creations Edition is LIVE: MYTHOLOGY