shield trophy -- wood (photoshop)

[eishiya]

I advise against trying to create wood by purely digital means. At the very least, find wood stock photos and mess with those to get your result.

Light and shadows are important as you said, but they may not be very easy to work with in your image as the light seems to be very generic/boring. Your best bet is probably to emphasize different "levels" of height in the wood by changing the pattern (so that it's obvious the two adjacent areas aren't directly connected), and with some ambient occlusion-ish shadows, since you won't have many (or any significant, anyway) cast shadows with the light you seem to have. This is probably a good thing, since "pretty" lighting would make the shield itself the focus rather than whatever is going to be on it.

You can try to add some reflections on the wood in some areas, but with a straight-on front view it might be difficult. Most shields photographed as shields (rather than jsut backgrounds) usually have some side/off-center lighting to emphasize their shape. Perhaps you can try to emulate this, but I'm not sure what you really need.

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