DCBB Art: Without a Map (Process: The Journey 1)
THE PEOPLE | THE PLACES | THE STORIES | THE JOURNEY (Part 2) | *WITHOUT A MAP
Warning: Some spoilers for the fic.
My WIPs folder has never been so bursting. Ever. I've never done a process post before, mainly because I work too hapazardly for it to make any sense to anyone (including me). This time however, there were two painting sthat really transformed throughout the drawing process and I thought it might be fun to show how I got to the finished product.
Done in two parts : 'Cas and the Ifrit' and 'Pele'
Click on images to view full size.
1) Cas and the Ifrit (a scene from the fic)
This one was the Photoshop effects intensive one. I have CS4 but I had never really used it for anything too effects-y, just the basic adjusmentments, layering, texturing, filter, lighting etc. That's not to say that this was advanced in way (it was really rather simple) but it was rather fun.
The concept: This is was a scene from the fic in which Cas and Dean encounter an ifrit (a type of djinn) in a cave.
It has legs. It has arms. It has a facsimile of a face with two black pits for eyes, and a mane of flame that flares around its head like a sunburst ...The ifrit condenses into its human shape once more, this time behind Cas but with its arms draped around his shoulders, like a friend come visiting on a weekend afternoon or a sister about to whisper a secret in his ear. It’s deceptively intimate, playing at an air of lazy camaraderie, but even Cas is tense now. The ifrit traces his jaw with one fiery finger and leans in close, and Dean can’t tell if it’s saying something in Cas’s ear or kissing him or eating his goddamn face or what.
The first step was to find a pose which would provide the basis of the ifrit.
In one my resources folders I came across this photo:
:
It was perfect for what I was going for. Next I did a quick paintover of the woman's face, removing the veil and cutting out the man (thus providing a place where I would piant Cas later).
Next, I would have to transform the woman into a flaming ifrit. This is where the Photoshop effects came in. A quick search provided me with a very helpful tutorial on how to go about it [link].
.1) Greyscaling the image
2) Finding edges
I used this image of a flame.
4) Applying the flame image to different parts of the image of the woman to create the desired effect. Linear Burn and Colour Burn provided the best results. Then I neatened and applied basic effects such as photo filters and played around with brightness/contrast and vibrancy to achieve the intensity I wanted.
5) Applying the flames to the hair and then neatening up.
During the last image I moved to from CS4 to Corel Painter 11. Adding flame to the parting of her hair was difficult with just using the warp tool in CS4. Therefore, I decided to paint that portion with a bristly brush, the details of which are easier to see on a larger scale (click on image to view).
Having completed the ifrit it was time to paint in Cas.
I used a screencap of the rough kind of pose I wanted and very crudely applied a yellow filter to create the colours that the flames of the ifrit would show on his face.
Using this as a rough guide, I began drawing Cas in the space I had left between her face and her hands.
It was very much a case of just painting, and working out what needed to be adjusted as I went along.
This was the image I was more less happy with:
In order to finalise the image I moved back to CS4, applied some textures and photo filters as well as adjusting the brightness/contrast, the vibrancy. I then applied the 'posterization' filter (found under Artistic).
This gave me my final piece:
I love to answer any questions if you have them!
Onto Process 2 : Pele...