Stage 1:
The painting
gets some color, touch-ups, and refinement |
Sampling different shades
on the face, I airbrushed the rougher areas, added highlights
and shadows, and generally smoothed out the contours of my Nubian
High Priestess’ gorgeous face.
I didn’t particularly care for the pronounced asymmetry
of my subject’s eyes (as present in my human model), so,
using the smudge tool with about 50% pressure, I “pulled”
her eye contours into shape so they matched better. (Thinking
back, the KPT6 Goo filter would have been a better tool choice
for this procedure. Live and learn.) |
|
Again using the airbrush
tool, I added white sparkles to her eyes to make them glisten,
and put in just a hint of a glow on her cheeks and lips. This
I did on a separate layer, in case I changed my mind later. |
 |
The next step was to fill
in her hair portion with braids. I created her braids—every
last one of them—by first drawing a simple 3-inch braid
by hand, scanning in the sketch, and manipulating this tiny image
in a separate file. I first pasted the braid into a new PhotoShop
canvas with transparent background, and deleted the white paper
portion outside the braid with the magic wand tool. I then inverted
the image (created a negative of it, since I wanted black braids
with white highlights), and got busy with the airbrush tool,
alternating black and white spot fills until my braid looked
like black shiny hair. The braid was way too soft; I needed to
add texture to it, so it looked like real African hair. I used
the noise filter to accomplish this, and was now satisfied I
had a good braid from which I could copy and assemble her lovely
hairdo. |