The Blues
I created an image in SketchClub from a reference photo, using primarily Vector shapes, and then I edited the image in iColorama to take advantage of some if its special effects. The result is an eerie and haunting image.
I used a photo reference. I opened the photo on SketchClub. I reduced the opacity of the photo layer so I could still see it as I painted, but it would not be so dark that I couldn’t see what I was I was painting. I kept this layer as the top layer throughout the rest of the painting process, turning visibility on and off to check my work as I went along. In the end, we will turn off visibility for this photo layer, so that nothing of the photo remains in the final image. On new layers below the photo layer, I used the Vector tool to make shapes. I made a layer with a skin-toned shape for her head, a layer with a skin-toned shape for her arms and chest, a layer with a dark shape for her hair, and a layer with lighter dark shapes for streaks in her hair. Just above the layer with her head shape, I made a layer with shapes for her eyebrows, eyelashes, nostrils and lips, still using the Vector tool. Just above the layer with her facial features, I made a layer with shadows and highlights for her lips, painted using a soft round brush. I made layers just above the layers with the head and body shapes and facial features, on which I used a soft round brush to paint shadows for her face and body, including shadows for her facial features. On top of the hair layers, I made a layer painted with a bristle brush to give texture to her hair. On a layer above that, I used the pen brush to paint tendrils of her hair. Then I used the Blur brush to paint over all the hard edges of all the Vector shapes I had made on all the layers. Now I can turn off visibility of the photo layer.
I made a layer for her black dress, below the body layers. I used additional layers to make corrections to her arm shapes. I filled the bottom-most layer with a purple color. Then I made a layer above the corrections for her arm shapes, and I painted shadows with a large soft round brush all around her figure. These shadows served the double purpose of correcting/hiding the mistakes in arm shadow placement that were a result of my corrections to the shapes of her arms. They are hard to see, but I used a large soft round brush to paint some lighter areas of her dress, on a layer just above the dress layer. I exported the image to my camera roll.
I opened the image in iColorama. I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 at low opacity for tonal separation. This made the image look a bit more spooky.
I used Texture/Leak to add a lighting effect to the image, to emphasize the face. I used Overlay mode, and experimented with all the sliders, including the sliders under Set, especially the Hue slider. I tried several presets, and several resizing and repositioning of those presets. The presets act like a layer above your image that you can rotate with a slider and resize and reposition with your fingers, to get the effect just where you want it.
I used Effect/Blend to blend the image with itself or with various versions of itself. I tried several blending modes, particularly the negative blending modes (Difference, Negative, Exclusion), and I tried all the slider settings, including the sliders under Set, especially the Lightness slider and both ends of the Gray slider. I selected these two results from among the many I produced in this process.
Then I used Effect/Blend to blend these two images together. I tried several blending modes, particularly the negative blending modes (Difference, Negative, Exclusion), and I tried all the slider settings, including the sliders under Set, especially the Lightness slider and both ends of the Gray slider. Then I used Style/Flat preset 18 at medium opacity, trying all the slider settings. Flat 18 gives that cutaway look, combined with the dark glowing skin. Then I smoothed the rough edges produced by Flat 18, by applying Effect/Denoise presets 1 and 4 several times.
I used Form/Sort.
Then, going back to the pre-Sort image, I used a different preset under Form/Sort.
Then I blended these two Sort outputs, using Effect/blend.
For the final result, I used Adjust/Levels to recover some contrast, and I blended with a previous version to recover some of her lighter skin tones, trying different blend modes and slider settings. I used Effect/Light and Adjust/High to further lighten her skin tones, and I used Effect/Raise at low opacity and Effect/Sharpen at low opacity to give her more definition. I also used Effect/Blend with an inverted brush mask to blend back her mouth from a previous version, at medium opacity.
