Colorstrips

I often enjoy cropping images or designs to get new interesting shapes and compositions.
Tonight I accidentally made my canvas 800x80 px instead of 800x800 and I liked the shape, so I decided to create the larger square canvas but divide it into a series of strips.

The design I came up with is based upon a photograph (bet you can't guess what) which I cropped and then painted over with colors I chose on a whim. it's actually really hard to get good color combinations! In the end I put a gradient over the whole thing and put it on Color mode to unify the palette... I think doing a subtle grading is often helpful to bring together a design, but I went fairly intensely in this case because I liked the orange and yellow tones.

I am also including the un-gradiented version so you can see what a difference it makes. Might be a bit easier to work out the subject matter from this one (but I'd still be surprised).

As an aside, I just put in an order for some business cards, which is fun. They will be here in a few weeks and I will take a photo of them so you (whoever you are that actually reads this) can see them. I like the design though it is quite simple and not anything mindblowing.