"How I Created This - Woman Guitarist Portrait" Corel

Woman Guitarist Portrait

Today's color photograph is from UNSplash Free Photos. I downloaded it yesterday from my email notice I get from them with free photos to use. Out of about 10 images I selected this one, "Woman Guitarist Portrait."

To begin I opened the photograph in Corel PhotoPaint and altered it to a 16-bit Grayscale file, saved that image. Then using Picasa's HDR tool I upped the Strength and Radius for a grainy, HDR feel. I saved that as a separate iteration, this was a large file about 16.4 megs.

I opened it in Corel Painter 11, a Legacy Product, and began painting the Woman. I appended the Earth Tones Palette and the Flesh Tones Palette to the basic one. using the fleshtones I painted her face using the Digital Watercolors Broad Brush. before I switched to the Coarse Dry Brush I painted most of the Woman and Guitar, leaving the background for later.

I used a number of pastel colors for the first layer on the background, adding colors as they suited me, and trying for a balance in color composition. About the only color I chose from the color photograph I started with, was the Burgundy Red of the Epiphone Special SG Guitar. I added a splash of tones throughout the Woman's Portrait, and colored her eye gloss for effect.

I changed to the Liquid Ink Airbrush Brush to begin to bring the focus upon the Woman Guitarist. I utilized that for a bit and switched to another Ink Brush for more line making. I chose color tones that I had not yet used for this portion of my painting.

I saved the iteration as a 16-bit color JPG, in it's large format. It was still only 72dpi. I opened the file in Corel PSP Pro X3, another Legacy Corel Product. Here I added Saturation Vibrancy to the image for some brightening of the colors. I also added a layer for my signature and placed that, merging layers when done. I then used the Image Information and added a Title, My Name and Date. In Resize I altered the piece to 150dpi and sized it for display here.

If it loads more slowly than usual, please let me know and I will stick with 72dpi in the future. Don't forget to click on the image for a much larger view. (Use F11 in your browser to make it a bit larger, F11 back to the standard browser setting.)

Comments, Shares and Pluses (on Google+ or Comments here on the blog,) are welcome. "Plus One Me," as Daria sings it!