A spiky organic gateway

 And another day with a new subject, this time, it was a structure. I was afraid it would be something really, really, REALLY weird, but it wasn't that weird.

The subject was a spiky organic gateway. The first thing I was thinking about was a gateway of stone, covered with plants and thorns, but it didn't work out really well, it wasn't organic. So I sketched a bit more.

The third sketch was the one (the one at the bottom). A gateway shaped like a tree, covered with thorns and roses. The "fence" besides the gate would be more trees, but with a more simple design.

The big sketch was very sloppy, but I thought the trees should have a "loose" feel to it. And thus the sketch was made.

In my other drawings I started with just adding colors. The background had a color, but the rest was just added with strokes. In drawings which take longer than 1 hour, I often use silhouettes. So I thought, why not using it this time? So I started with a dark grey, and then with white I added highlights, I used opacity, lighter greys, darker greys and such. And after all that playing with colors, I got a drawing with some nice shadows and highlights.

There was even time to give it some nice colors! So that's what I did. Normally, it would take me quite some time, because the layer style is often "normal". But I experimented a bit and this time, another layerstyle was used. (I believe it was "Hard Light") and the result is quite satisfying to be honest.