Glowing Mushrooms

Illumithereum Project on https://knownorigin.io/brettstebbins

Illumithereum Project is a series of digital artworks created entirely with vector shapes. The Lighting is the overwhelming theme in the art more so than the subject matter.

This is 100% vector art created in Affinity Designer. I first made the shapes for the mushroom and set them with a base color or gradient. For the lighting I layered vector shapes on top of the mushroom and set them to a Hard Light blend mode. Then using the Gaussian Blur effect I softened these shapes making them look like a “glow”. I also used the Transparency Tool to fade off certain parts. For the background I made two gradients that were repeated, flipped and moved around till I got the look I wanted. Some of the duplicate gradients were set to either an Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light blend mode. I also used the Transparency Tool to fade of parts of the gradients to control how much of the gradient was effecting the background. Through these simple techniques I was able to make the illustration look much more complex than it really is.