The enlarged eyes, and the girl's attention to something to the side and off the canvas leaves the viewer naturally wondering what she is looking at or thinking. This, combined with the darkness that surrounds her, lends an aura of mystery. She looks like a disembodied face floating in a murky black night. I show you how I made three versions.
I started with this image that I made previously. You can see how I made it here.
I reused this image that I created previously. I will use it to distort the girl over. To make this simple pattern in iColorama, i opened a blank white canvas. Then I used Brush/Colorize, in the Glass Edges preset, with a large Basic hard brush, to draw in the purple part.
In iColorama, using Effect/Distort, I distorted the girl over the pattern, in Normal mode. I used my fingers to move her around over the pattern, and tried different slider settings, until I got something I liked.
I cropped in Form/Crop.
I applied Style/Coherence for smoothness, then I sharpened the eyes and lips a bit in Effect/Sharpen, using an inverted brush mask.
I darkened the background by using Adjust/Exposure and moving the brightness slider all the way down. I used a brush mask so the face would not be darkened.
As a finishing touch, I used Preset/Border preset 3 so she fades into blackness all the way around. Now she looks like a distorted face floating in the black night. This is Version 1.
To make a second version, I used this image of the girl that I created in Metabrush.
In iColorama, I used Effect/Distort to distort the girl over the same pattern we used before, in Normal mode.
I cropped using Form/Crop. I lightened the face in Adjust/Levels.
I darkened the background by using Adjust/Exposure and moving the brightness slider all the way down. I used a brush mask so the face would not be darkened.
This is Version 2.
To make a third version, while I was doing the Distort step for Version 2 in Normal mode, I also saved this variation in Overlay mode.
I brightened the colors and then equalized the lightness in Adjust/EQ. Adjust/EQ and Adjust EQ2 are useful when there are too dark and too light large portions of the image that you want to bring closer together in terms of brightness.
I applied Effect/Raise preset 1, for emphasis.
I used Tone to modify the color, which also tones down the bright sections.
I applied the first preset in Effect/Pixels at low to medium opacity. Then I used Adjust/Exposure to darken the background, using a brush mask to prevent the face from being darkened.
I applied Preset/Border preset 2 with a radius of almost 50%, using a brush mask to prevent the interior of the face from being darkened. This is Version 3.