You are so right "MoiraMacTaggert"; working professionally does take a great deal of the joy out of being an artist.

This work is beautiful.

This is so beautiful!

*chuckling* Sorry. I can rant, I know.

Yes, this is part of what I do for a living, but truth be told digital illustrating isn't as fun when you do it professionally. All people really want are ugly or simplistic logos.

And thank you all, again!

Best looking mucous I ever saw...

Holy crap, I feel like Fry getting a lecture from Professor Farnsworth...

"No, you idiot, the ship stays still and the universe moves around it!"

Do you do this for a living, Moira?



BB

Ok, I think my brain exploded on the 2nd paragraph.

Another great piece.

I'll do a bit more art notes, to make it clearer how I do things. For this image, as with my Phoenix image and most of my images, I started with a blank canvas in PSP. In this case, a blank black canvas. I create a hand-sketched wire frame image and scan it as a layer for reference.

From there, I laid down base coats and basic colors, framing where I wanted her hair, skin, costume, etc. Over that, I put in her features--eyelashes, lips, nose, etc. Then, shadows--highlights and lowlights over the medium tones of the base coat. As these are studies of lighting, I spend a lot of time on that in the ALitS series. I overdo it with layers, as I always do, and layer different levels of opacity over each other to keep each section seperate, and allow corrections on individual layers. Then, to meld them together, I use the smudge and soften touchup brushes on "Sample Merged" to blend and smooth the colors, and with her hair to drag the color through (this is most visible on the bottom of her hair, near her shoulder--I did not blur as much there, because I wanted a more liquid effect with her hair. I've been told it looks like mucous, but I like it). My last layer was actually her tiara. It was a pain getting it placed how I wanted it.

I then copied all of the layers merged together, pasted them as a new layer (or, most appropriately, new layers), and filtered a few times at different opacities. The most visible of those filters is the artistic effect "Brush Stokes" on a modified version of the "Watercolor" preset, and that's only somewhat visible as a softening.

Yay for PSP!

I have seen this before...
But the larger version is better.


BB

When you say created entirely...
you mean you started with a blank white page and drew her from scratch, right? (instead of using a pic or a 3d model as a base)

Either way its very good. I like the style and lighting