Digital Image: Tree in Winter

I am like that tree. Fresh out of leaves, fresh out of ideas.
Purely photoshop work.
I browsed my collection of photos and found a few images with trees in them. This one was the easiest to trace. Other trees had leaves.

I used polygonal lasso to trace the edges, then filled it with gradient. With selection still active, I filled a new layer with white, then another layer with black. I moved the selection a bit to the right and deleted a part of the white paint. Then moved the selection to the left and deleted the black one. Shading and highlight done.

I made the shadow using a layer copy of the tree image, and filled it with black, flipped vertical. From edit menu, I used transformation -> skew, then, well, just skewed it from side to side until I got the shadow position I liked.

Background was done in less than 5 minutes. I filled the bottom layer with black, added a new layer on top of it and paint the ground using soft edge brush.
I made the snow also with soft edge brush but added scatter and jitters (size and opacity) on brush preset menu.
Done.

Digital Image: Simple Flower

I really don't like drawing flowers. But it is a must-draw object. So at least I have to give it a try.
Just like back in third year art lesson. I used color pencils back then.
This image does not look like color pencil sketch. I wanted to make it like hand drawing. Apparently I failed.
This is purely photoshop-generated. I only used brush and smudge tool. It's tidier than my nine years old self's scrawl.

Digital Image: Carol Singer

This is practically the first ever humanoid image I've made using only digital means. Most of my pictures are based on hand sketches.

First, I used Corel Draw to make the outline. I'm not an educated graphic designer, so I won't know about any special feature in that software, hence, the usage of only a simple pen tool. It's kind of easy too. Not as complicated as Illustrator, I'll never get the hang of it. The pen tool can only draw straight line. That's why I have to continuously press Ctrl+Q to create a curve. It's still time-consuming for me, despite the simplicity of said tool.

Then I painted the colors with Adobe Photoshop. Also only using fill option and gaussian blur. Very simple procedure that anyone can do. Shading and highlighting are still a mystery to me. See?

Little Princess

I made these images for my niece. She's three years old now. She loves playing dress-up as a princess. My cousin asked me to compile her photos and create a fantasy-like collage. I didn't know what people consider as fantasy, so I gave my best shot.

The first image was easy. I just piled a photo of some clouds on top of my niece's larger photo, and changed the opacity of the top layer until I was happy with the result, and then I merged both layers. I shrunk the other eight pictures of her and add some layer masks and painted some black on the edges with an airbrush. Done.

With the second image, I used more care to create the apples. Here, I compiled four photos. One was still in the actual size, the other three I shrunk. Same basic layer masks addition to soften the edges. After all the photo layers were merged, I pasted the apple image I made in another window to a new layer. Adjusted the size, then copy-pasted it until I had my border consisted of apples. Done.

The third image only used one photo and three pumpkin carriages. I erased the background of the photo and placed it in the middle of the canvas. I added some background color with gradient fill. I already made the pumpkin carriage picture and only changed the size and color for this collage.

The steps were simple for a professional graphic designer. Not for me. I spent days working on these. But it's all for my niece. Now she can happily show off her charm on her father's YM.

First Sketch with Digital Paint

I made this image just yesterday. It's based on my first sketch from the previous post. I kind of skipped the tracing step, and went straight to painting. Alright, the painting was basically only filling the blanks with paint bucket tool. I'm still not brave enough to erase the outline.

The result is so very flat. I don't really have the ability to shade and highlight images, but will try, though. Will try the hardest. Hopefully it can be better. More 3D-ish. I'm a bit happy with red color on the heart. Very simple to make, too. I only use gaussian blur for the shade and highlight. No idea what to do about the wings. How do you make some wispy effect? Wispy is good for wings. Maybe airbrush from the brush preset with additional spatters can do the trick. This is the time to experiment ....

Digital Image: Rose

At first I only wanted to make a simple line art image from Beast's rose. But the result was not really satisfying. It was plain. Granted, the first one was a white-on-black.

I loaded the image selection, did an inversion of said selection, and filled it with red. I ended up having a red ink blot with gaps all over the place. But from my point of view, the current result has more character. I kind of like this one better. I added some white and a bit of maroon to give it a more three-dimensional look. The background was the easiest. It started with a depressing gray, then with a pinch of filter (noise and lightening effect), it turned out not so depressing after all. The sparkles, I shamelessly ripped them off from Beauty and the Beast.

Kiddies Sketch

I made this drawing for my niece last valentine. I never really thought about what I drew. Only now I realize, the sketch might imply inter species love relationship and an Easter bunny without the eggs. And the girl has a fox dolly. And they all live happily over the rainbow. Talk about psychosis of the craziest order.

The sketch was drawn on an A4 paper, using pencil and black ink. Ballpoint, not drawing pen. I can't think of the color scheme. Pink is definitely a must and the bear should be brown. Other than that, I haven't got a clue.