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Using color, shadow, and texture, I created a furtive face with a lacy texture suggestive of the Victorian era, and and blue shadows lending an aura of mystery.
I started with this photo from Pixabay, a source of copyright-free images. I like her sideways, serious expression.
In iColorama, to smooth her face, I used Effect/Denoise Smooth preset and a touch of Effect/Glow preset 3.
I used Form/Warp to change the shape of her face and enlarge her eyes, and making her mouth more pursed.
I applied Adjust/Tonelab preset 4, Tone/Enhance preset 2, and Vibrance, all at low opacity, to enhance the color and tone of the image.
I deepened the eye color in Tone/Tint, using an inverted brush mask to apply the effect only to her eyes.
Using Brush/Paint, I painted in catchlights in her eyes. Using an inverted brush mask, I smoothed the catchlights in Style/Coherence, zooming way in and using a tiny brush.
Now I applied some color using Tone/Tint. I tried several presets, blending modes, and opacities.
I used Effect/Light at medium opacity to bring out the highlights. I experimented with the intensity slider to emphasize just the portions of the image that I wanted to bring out.
I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 at low opacity for clarity and depth.
Using an inverted brush mask, I used the vibrance slider in Adjust/Vibrance to desaturate the red of the lips, which was too dark.
With an inverted brush mask, I used Adjust/Exposure to lighten the eyes.
With an inverted brush mask, I used Effect/Blur to blur the edges of where I had applied Effect/Light, earlier.
In Effect/Raise, I Raised the eyes and the mouth to give them more emphasis.
I painted over her in the Metabrush app using Doodle brush 22/71. I painted in Shatter mode, using the same image as brush source.
Back in iColorama, I used Effect/Blend to blend the pre-Metabrush image over the Metabrush image. I used Overlay mode. I used the gray slider under Set. I used a brush mask at partial opacity to paint over the edges that result from the use of the gray slider, to smooth them.
I applied a touch of Adjust/Tonelab preset 4, for clarity and depth.
With an inverted brush mask, I used Style/Coherence and Effect/Blur to smooth a glitch on the inner corner of the left eye.
I used Effect/Raise 1 at medium opacity to sharpen the entire image. I cropped.
Now I want to darken the surrounding area to focus the viewer's eye on the girl's face, and particularly her eyes. Using Adjust/Exposure and an inverted brush mask, I darkened the background on the right side, and I used Preset/Border presets 2 and 3 for a vignetting effect. Finally, using an inverted brush mask, I used Exposure and Tone/B&W, both at low to medium opacity, to lighten the whites of her eyes, which provides heightened contrast to draw the eye.
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