Rear View

The dramatic lighting in this image comes from painting highlights on the figure in the direction of the imagined light source, then creating a background that unevenly reflects the light source, and then emphasizing those light areas as well as creating shadowy areas using the facilities of iColorama.

I started with this sketch of mine, done with a Tombo pen on paper. This was a 90-second sketch of a live model. I photographed the page and and cleaned it up and brightened it in iColorama using Adjust/Levels and Style/Flow at low opacity, as well as Effect/Denoise presets 1 and 4 to de-alias the lines, which is sometimes needed after Flow. Then I used Effect/Sharpen preset 3 at low radius, which is also often needed after Flow.

I opened the image in Paintstorm Studio, and on a new layer I painted over the figure with the Roller Brush 1. On another new layer I used the same brush to create a ground for the figure. I will keep the original sketch layer always as the top layer, and I changed its blend mode to Multiply, so that the other layers can be seen through it, but none of the other layers will obscure the sketch. I saved this image to my camera roll. Let's call it Image A, we will reuse it later.

On another new layer, I used the same brush to paint in some color.

On another new layer, I painted some highlights and shadows. I used a blender brush to soften the shadows.

On another new layer, I used the paint bucket tool to fill the layer with color. I dragged this layer to the bottom of the stack so that it would not obscure any of the other image elements on the other layers.

I created a layer mask for the fill layer, and I painted around the edges of the layer mask using the Roller Brush 1. This has the effect of erasing the contents of the fill layer wherever I painted on the layer mask.

I created a new layer just beneath the sketch layer, and I painted color using the Watercolor brush.

Here are my layers. I saved to my camera roll. I also saved a psd file to iCloud, which preserves the layers, in case I want to return to it later.

I opened the image in iColorama and used Adjust/Levels to increase contrast, and Effect/Raise to emphasize the lines.

I used Brush/Paint with a large white Stipple brush 4/25 to paint a pattern onto the background. I used a brush mask to confine the effect to only the background. Then I reduced the opacity, so the stipples are a pale orange. I exported the brush mask to save it for use later.

I used Tone/LUTS to change the color.

I painted with a low opacity textured white brush over the background, importing the brush mask that I saved previously. Then I reduced the opacity, so that the effect was to lighten and reduce the contrast of the background. I will call this Image B, we will use it again later.

I opened the image in Metabrush and used a circular Gradient brush with the brush settings set to maximum spacing and maximum variances, to paint bubbles onto the image at medium opacity. This is Version 1.

Now I'll create another version. I turned off visibility of the bubble layer, and on a new layer I painted with a variety of texture brushes and wet brushes. I saved this to my camera roll. Let's call this Image C.

I opened the image in iColorama, and I used Effect/Blend to blend Image A onto the saved Metabrush Image C. I tried several blending modes and slider settings, including the gray and lightness sliders under Set. I used the Difference blending mode here. When it works for a particular image, the Difference blend mode can yield dramatic results.

I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 at medium opacity, Adjust/Levels, and Effect/Raise, for tone and emphasis.

I used Effect/Light at medium opacity to pull out the highlights. This helps to lend some dramatic lighting to the image.

I used a preset under Texture/Leak at low opacity to add a lighting effect, with light coming from the right. Then I used Adjust/Exposure to darken the image, and used a brush mask so that only the edges were darkened. This is Version 2.

I created this version by adding a framed image of an image I had created previously. To make the framed image inside the image, I matched the colors of the second image to the primary image using Tone/Match. I lightened it using Adjust/Levels. I applied a preset under Texture/Grunge to try to match the texture of the primary image. Then I opened a blank white canvas in iColorama, and painted it brown in Brush/Paint. I applied a texture using Texture/Metal. Then I used Effect/Blend to blend the recolored image onto the brown image, shrinking it and positioning it so there was a thin margin of brown on 2 sides. Then I used Form/Crop to crop, so that there was the same sized brown margin on all 4 sides. Then I opened the primary image in iColorama, and used Effect/Blend to blend the framed image onto it, shrinking it and positioning it where I wanted it. Then I used Brush Paint with a soft round gray brush to paint a drop shadow for the hanging picture, using a rectangular shape mask to keep the shadow from spilling onto the framed picture. The framed picture gives the seated woman a reason to be looking away from us. I used Form/Crop to crop a bit from the bottom of the canvas. This is Version 3.

Now to make another version, I used Effect/Blend to blend Image B onto Image C. I tried several blend modes and slider settings. Then I used Effect/Raise preset 2 at low opacity to bring out the texture.

I used Style/Tensor preset 5 at medium opacity, with the Amount at 100% and opacity at 50%, and I used the Photo button with Image A as the secondary photo. Then I used Adjust/Levels to increase brightness and contrast. Finally, I used Form/Crop to crop a bit from the bottom. This is Version 4.