Making Of 'Snowfall'



This image actually started as a random sketch. I had decided I just wanted to draw something purple, and since people are one of my favourite painting subjects, I decided to paint a girl with purple as the colour scheme. After leaving the sketch alone for some time, I decided to work on it some more.

Step 1:

I began this image with a plain background in Photoshop onto which I splashed on some colours and overlaid a texture (Fig.01). This was because I don't like working on plain-looking backgrounds. Adding a texture and some varying colour keeps me interested in an image and also helps me to achieve the desired mood with a bit more ease.

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Step 2:

I then created a new layer and started the sketch. I blocked in the colours with a large hard round brush and then roughly added detail with a smaller size of the same blocking brush (Fig.02). I also created a new layer for the hair, and roughly painted it in. It was at this point that I decided to leave it alone and forgot about it for a while.

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

Step 3:

Coming back to it later, I decided to improve upon it, as I liked the direction it was taking. I further detailed her face and shoulder, using a small hard round brush and soft round brush to smooth it out as I went along. I also worked a little more on the hair and robe, added some makeup, and decided that I wanted her to have purplish-blue eyes (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

Fig. 03

Step 4:

By now it was time to start the detailing the hair. After running through a few possibilities, I decided on the one shown in Fig.04. It was quite rough at this stage but that would be taken care of later. For the mask, I painted its shape in deep purple on a separate layer, and set the layer to overlay in order to achieve the effect that can be seen in the image. A little more work was done on the robe, overlaying a texture to make its appearance a bit more interesting.

Fig. 04

Fig. 04


Step 5:

I spent more time smoothing out the skin and features. The hair was refined by first blocking in the strands with a medium soft round brush and then adding in the details with a smaller hard round brushes with shape dynamics turned on. I decided that the background was too light to depict the mood I was aiming for, so I duplicated the coloured background layer and set the layer mode to overlay (Fig.05). To add some realism to the skin, I made a new layer and added some skin blemishes with a small medium-soft round brush with scatter turned on. I then turned off the scatter and added the slightly larger beauty spots beneath her eye and on her forehead (Fig.06).

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

Step 6:

Some final refinement of the hair was done and the snow was added. I made the snow with a hard round brush set to scatter and shape dynamics. When I had an effect that I liked, I duplicated the snow layer and blurred it slightly, then set it to overlay at low opacity to give it a soft glow (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

Step 7:

After some final touch-ups had been done to the face and hair, I saved a flattened version of the image (I always like to save my layers in case I need to edit the image later) and then reopened it in Photoshop for post-production (For me, my images are never really complete until I have done a bit of post-production on them). I then duplicated the image, applied the Gaussian Blur filter at a radius of about 6 pixels, and then set the layer to soft light at low opacity. I flattened the image, and created a new layer, which I filled with a suitable colour for the atmosphere, and then I set the layer to soft light. Flattening the layer again, I adjusted the image using the Brightness/Contrast tool (located under Adjustments in the Image tool list) until I achieved the desired effect (Fig.08). The last thing to do was to add the copyright text and it was finished!

Fig.08

I must say I had a lot of fun with this piece and I think I learnt quite a bit from it. I hope you enjoyed reading this "Making Of".

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