Magical Balloons | Theo van der Ster

I created this photorealistic montage in April 2016 and I honestly don’t remember how the idea originated. I had an idea of how I wanted the end result to look and started searching for pictures of a wall I could use.

I found this photo of a graveyard wall in Dunmore, County Galway, Ireland on Wikimedia (link).

I removed the trees and the grey sky and pasted in a blue sky with fluffy clouds. I then created the balloon girl drawing in Clip Studio (aka Manga Studio).

I used Affinity Photo to blend the various elements together. The font for THE WALL OF DREAMS is Chalkduster, and I used a displacement filter to make it look as if the letters and the girl were actually painted on the wall. I also painted some half transparent and blurred structure on top of it to make it look more grungy and realistic.

The real balloons aren’t actually real. I downloaded a fairly large png of a blue balloon and changed the color on a few duplicates. I also painted a shadow on the wall for the first balloon.

The placard was created in Affinity Designer. Looking back, the text is a little corny but I can’t really think of anything better and the thing needs to be there to balance the composition.

And here is the end result. The idea is that dreams become reality, in this case in the form of balloons.

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