Girl with Blue Eyes

I started out to make a painting from a portrait photograph. I made the painting in Paintstorm Studio Pro, but as is generally the case, it needed a lot of additional work in iColorama to complete it. Then I decided to make two more versions. Version 2 was a rendering of Version 1 texturized in Metabrush and then blended onto some wooden planks in iColorama. Version 3 was a distortion of Version 2.

I started with this photo from the Sktchy app. I thought she had an interesting face.

I am planning to paint on the photo. But first, I pre-processed the photo in iColorama. I used Form/Warp to change the shape of the face, and I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 for tonal separation. I lightened the image using Adjust/Levels, and I smoothed using Style/Coherence and Effect/Denoise smooth preset.

Now I opened the image in Paintstorm Studio Pro. On a new layer, I painted some color onto her face with the Drawblend Opacity brush, then I blended it with a soft blending brush.

On a new layer I painted the eyes.

On another new layer I painted color onto the hair.

I blended the hair with a bristle blending brush.

I painted texture onto the hair with the Brush Hairy 2 brush. I saved to my camera roll.

I opened the image in iColorama, and I made some color and tone adjustments using Tone/Enhance and Adjust/Tonelab. Then I used Effect/Denoise Smooth Preset in preparation for using Raise, and then I used Effect/Raise to emphasize the brush strokes.

I enlarged the eyes in the Elasticam app.

I made several tone and color adjustments in iColorama.

I created some variations using Texture/Leak.

I desaturated the shadow under her nose using Adjust/Vibrance and an inverted brush mask. This is Version 1.

Now I want to make another version. I imported Version 1 into Metabrush. I created a new blank layer, selected a peachy color and filled the layer with it, using the white paint bucket icon in the layers panel. Then I selected a textured brush, and I erased with it (select the Eraser icon rather than the Brush icon at the top of the screen). I did the erasing selectively, mostly around the edges, using a large brush size, and where I wanted a textured effect, dabbing rather than stroking.

I did the same on another new layer, this time choosing a darker bronze color to fill the layer with, and choosing a different brush to erase with. In the brush settings, I set the spacing to the maximum, and position variance and rotation variance to the maximum, all the dynamics sliders set to their middles, and the extras set to their minimums.

These are my layers. I saved to my camera roll.

I will blend the work in progress onto this Pixabay photo. Pixabay is a source of copyright-free images.

First I processed the photo in iColorama for tone, using Adjust/Tonelab preset 4, and then I applied Effect/Glow at low opacity.

Using Effect/Blend, I blended the girl onto the wood, in Multiply mode. I tried moving the top image around to find the best location for the blend.

I used Tone/Enhance and Tone/Sepia to modify the color, and Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 and Adjust/High preset 1 to tone and lighten the image. Then I used Form/Crop to crop. I like this result. I'll call it Version 2.

I want to make yet another version. I used Effect/Blend to blend Version 1 onto Version 2, to bring back some detail. Then I did a bit more color tweaking using Tone.

Now I opened Version 1 in iColorama and blurred it slightly and cropped to just her face. (I did this just to make a smooth but curved surface to distort over.) Then I used Effect/Distort to distort Version 2 over the cropped face, trying different positions of the top image.

Now I cropped. At this point, as a result of successive crops, the image was getting pretty small. I wanted to upsize the image before making further edits. So I upsized her in BigPhoto. Then I opened her again in iColorama and used Style/Flow at low opacity and then Effect/Denoise for smoothness, and then I used Effect/Sharpen at low radius.

Finally, I used Brush/Paint with a white triangular brush to paint a border. This is Version 3.