Day 16: Graveyard

Hey guys! Today I have some graveyard nails for you. I thought this challenge was going to take me forever to complete. So I was surprised that it took me about 2 hours to complete the design, maybe even less. I also loved the end result, because I wasn't expecting it to come out so well. I had not yet attempted to paint small objects or a realistic place, so I think it's good for a first time. Well I was originally going to go with a dark background for the mani, therefore I did a navy, gray and purple gradient. Well let me tell you, it looked more like a galaxy mani than anything, so I took that off and started all over. After that fail, I went on Google for a bit of inspiration and found the following picture. The image belongs to a Deviant Art Artist named kidy-kat (Muri), and it's a beautiful piece in my opinion, very haunting in a good way.

Now to show you the mani. As you can see, I took the inspiration of the foggy background from the image for the design. I only used a matte top coat for this mani because I thought it was appropriate for the nail art. Well, that's my opinion.

I started off with 2 coats of white polish and then did a light gradient over that. I used white and grey for the gradient, white towards the top and grey on the bottom. All details were done with a tiny brush and acrylic paint by the way. I watered down black paint to make the trees all the way in the back. The reason I used the paint that way was so the trees can look far away. I added more trees towards the front with less watered down paint so they would be more opaque. The watered down paint was also used for the ground, that way it would look more uneven and with shadows. I even added some grass and little hills in some places. For the gravestones and mausoleum I used grey paint. Actually, the mausoleum was originally a gravestone which I messed up, and I somehow managed to turn that mistake into something better. The last details were the birds, adding the shadows on the gravestones so they look more 3D, the "RIP" on the headstone, and the cross on the mausoleum. I let everything dry completely and topped it off with the matte top coat.

I enjoyed doing these, and even surprised myself. I didn't think I could do something like this, so it was pretty exciting when it was coming together. I really hope you guys enjoyed this post in its entirety. Also, I recently reached 1k followers on Instagram and I must say I appreciate all the support. If you don't follow yet but would like to, click here and it'll take you to my page. Have a nice day everyone. Once again, thank you very much!

Polishes Used:

White: Wet N Wild (Wild Shine) "French White Creme"

Matte: Wet N Wild (Wild Shine) "Matte Top Coat"

Acrylic Paints Used:

White: Apple Barrel "White"

Black: Apple Barrel "Black"

Grey: Craftsmart "Grey"