Making of Fairy:I got some requests about how I made "Sweet fairy". There are a lot of techniques in here that I standard use in almost every work. Some of them easy to use and some require a bit of illustrative skills. This is not a beginner tutorial, things like masking, adjustment layers and clipping masks are knowledge you already must have. I use Photoshop CS5 and a Wacom intuos 4 for this piece. The size of the image is 2700x4400.
Step 1.Choose a good, high resolution sharp, source picture. I used a Mask To get the girl loose from the background. (If you don't know what masking is you should learn that first). After you made the mask you can apply it so you have a nice cut-out version of your model.
Step 2.I've also masked away her hair because I already know I want to change her hair. I also want to change her facial features. I will use the liquify tool for this.(Filter-->liquify)I went back 3 or 4 times to liquify to "sculpt" her face.
Step 3.Create a new layer above the layers where the model is in. In this layer I made a rough sketch of where I want the new hair to be. I used a hard brush, 100% opacity with a color sample from her still existing hair.Also painted a few strings of hair that will fall on her shoulders.
Step 4.I want to "sculpt" her body a bit with the liquify tool(Filter-->liquify)...to give her the fairy but. I carefully push her but out a bit with a liquify brush almost the size of her but and push her waist a bit in.
Step 5.Now Im gonna paintover her face. Here is were the illustration part comes in. Start with a new layer between the modellayer an the hair layer. click right with your mouse and choose "create clipping mask". Now all you will do in that layer will only show in the layer beneeth it (the layer where it is clipped on). In our case it will only effect the model. My layer pallette now looks like this.
Turn of the "hair"layer and zoom in on the face. Choose a soft brush about the size of her eye and set it to 20% opacity. During this process I constantly use the colorpicker to take samples of the skin while painting it over.I preferably use a somewhat lighter color to paint over it.If you come to darker area's to paint over than use an opacity of 10%. Because this layer is a clipping mask you don't have to bother painting over the edges of her face, it wont show. Avoid the eyes mouth and nostrells while painting over the skin.
Step 6.Back to the liquify tool. I adjusted her mouth and her eyes. Stretching them a little wider. Now we go to enhance the eyes.I start with the dodge tool, i use a soft brush at 20% opacity. I used a very small brush size. Carefully touch the white of her eyes making it a bit whiter and brighter. If it doesn't give the result you are hoping for you should color sample a bit of the white you do like and paint whit a low opacity soft brush the white parts a bit whiter.Than go to the iris of the eye. Dodge around the pupil, do not dodge it perfectly round, aim for just 1/3 or 1/4thof the iris to be bright. Because you use dodge you get some of the original color to come out brighter.Leave the outer edge of the iris dark. If you want it darker use the brun tool with a small soft brush at 20%opacity and slightly burn the edges of the iris in her eyes. Now put both the dodge tool and burn tool at 10% opacity.Use the dodge tool to lighten up the part of her eye underneath her eyebrow in the upper corner.Use the burn tool to darken the eyelid.
Step 7.Make an adjustment layer brightness-contrast (use the halfblack/half white circle at the bottom of your layerpalette)Click right mouse button and choose "create clipping mask" so it will only apply to the model. Set brightness down a whole lot. The part of her body that is in the shadow will get even darker. That's the part you need to look at. Make it just dark enough so that you don't loose a lot of details.Place your cursor in the mask part of that adjustment layer and now use the paintbucket to fill that layer with black.Now everything is bright again. Choose a softbrush at 20% opacity and paint with white (still in the mask of the adjustment layer.)With the white brush you now paint the darker area's around her back, foot and the left side of her face even darker.
Step 8.Same as step 7 but now the lighter part... like this. Make an adjustment layer brightness-contrast (use the halfblack/half white circle at the bottom of your layerpalette)Click right mouse button and choose "create clipping mask" so it will only apply to the model. Set brightness up a whole lot. The part of her body that is in the light will get even lighter. That's the part you need to look at. Place your cursor in the mask part of that adjustment layer and now use the paintbucket to fill that layer with black.Now everything is bright again. Choose a softbrush at 20% opacity and paint with white (still in the mask of the adjustment layer.)With the white brush you now paint the lighter area's around her shoulder, chest, legs and the right side of her face even lighter.YOU NEED TO PLACE THE STEP 7 AND STEP 8 LAYER ABOVE THE PAINTOVERSKIN LAYER.
Step 9.Make a new layer. It needs to be on top of all the other adjustment layers. Right click your mouse on that layer and choose "create clipping mask". It is now on top of all layers that apply to the model. Take you paintbucket and choose 50% grey (That is rgb code 128,128,128) Fill the new layer totally with this grey.Then set this layer on blending mode "overlay" (you can do this in the top of your layerpalette). You will see no changes in the model layer. We will use this in a minute.Layerpallette now looks like this
Step 10.The grey layer is in clipping mask. I use this layer for the overall lighting and shadowing.I use dodge- and burntools very often :) I you use it directly on your source picture you damage the original pixels. Like we did with her eyes.If you use the burn and the dodgetool in the grey layer you won't damage the original pixels but still get a similar effect.The great thing is that you can always turn back to it's original state. ( I always use burn and dodge but you can also use black and white paint, this has to do with the blending mode "overlay" but that's another tutorial)Now back to the fairy, I dodge the grey layer around her shoulders and on her legs. Creating a silky shine on her skin.When i'm not satisfied with the result I usually save a copy and try to use burn and dodge directly on the source, if you choose to do it be carefull because you cannot undo the results.
Step 11.The hair. I could write several tutorials on this but I still haven't managed to get a good grip on this technique myself. I use severeal techniques trying to find the ultimate one. Here I did this.I've drawn the rough shape of her hair. I used a hairbrush for this, that looks like this.(downloaded it and free to use and thanked its creator)
Than created a new layer in top of the hairbrush. I painted over the unfilled part of the brush. I've used three or four basic colors.Now we use dodge tool with a large brush at 20% opacity to highlight the part that is in the light and we use dodge to darken the part that is in the shadow.From her on I use the smudge tool to create hairlocks and shape her hairdo.If everything is smudged I use a smaller smudge brush (if you own a pentablet make sure pen pressure is on)With the smaller brush I define the strings of hair on her forehead and in her neck. This is all still in the second hair layer that is on top of the hairbrush layer.If you feel like the overall shape is good and it looks cool to you than merge the two hairlayers in to one.Because I used a hairbrush for a base you can see the tiny strings of hair come out of it. That gives it a "realistic" look.Last step on the hair layer is getting the dodgetool (again!) Setting it to a very small hard brush at 70% (pen pressure on if you have a tablet).On the light area of the hair you can use the dodgetool to paint strings of hair.Repeat this with the burn tool.
Step 12.Place the background image in the layer underneath the model. After placing I use two adjustment layers. The first "brightness and contrast" to darken it a bit. The second "hue and saturation" where I took the saturation down a bit.I wanted the focus to be on the fairy and not on the model.After that I duplicated the background layer. For the top layer of the two background layers I used filter guassian blur.I created a mask on this blurred layer (using the greysquare with the white circle on the bottom of your layerpalette)In this mask I painted with black the bottom part of the blurred layer. This masked out the blurred part of the backrgound where she was sitting on.Because the original background is underneath the orginal the sharp part of the background shows again.I did this to create a depth of field where the part of the backrgound where the fairy is will be sharp and everything else behind her will be blurred.Again to get the focus on the model.
Step 13.The wings. I searched for a good source of an insect with cool wings that was sitting in the right angle. And yes I found one on wiki (creative commons and free to use) of this moth. I masked out the wings and placed it behind her.Because the wings had a very sharp cutting line they looked pasted. I took the smudgetool and used a small brush at 80% (with pen pressure on)I smudge a few "hairs on the wings so they wont look that sharp anymore.At the bottom part of the wings I used the blur tool to blur the edges a bit.
Step 14.The light beams. Get the lasso selection tool. Select the area you want the light beams to be. Take the paintbucket and fill the selection with white.Undo the selection, you now have a hardedged area of white. Go to filters-gaussianblur. And blur the whole area extremely.Turn opacity of that layer to 30% and put the layer behind the fairy and her wings and in front of the background.See that little spot where the lightbeam touches the background? Use a dodgetool on that spot on the background layer to lighten it.See the spot on her lower back where the light falls through her wings? Use the dodge tool on the greylayer of the fairy to lighten her behind.
Step 15.Details. Makes sure you paint a shadow under her body. I always use a very dark color out of the range of the source she is sitting on.Use a soft brush at 15% (no pen pressure) and slowly paint a shadow on the moss she is sitting on.SAVE IT ALL AS A PSD!
Step 16.Merge all layers! Her come a few tricks!- duplicate the merged layers. Select the top layer. Go to filter--> others--> High pass. You will now see a grey window where you can see darker edges of you work.
Click ok. Put the grey high pas layer in blending mode overlay. This is a sharping technique used a lot by photographers. It really gives a boost to your work. If you feel the effect is to much you can try it again at lower pixels or turn the opacity of the layer down a bit.- create a new layer. fill it with a gradient (use the gradienttool with that is in the square with the paintbucket) Use a black and white radial gradient. Make sure that her face and her body are in the white of the radial gradient and the background is in the black of the gradient. Turn the gradient layer to blending mode "overlay" and turn the opacity of this layer to 20% (or even lower). It really helps focussing a little bit more on the model.\- do a final dodge and burn touch on the total work.