How this was done - "You Cannot be Serious" Corel Painter 11

You Cannot be Serious

"You Cannot be Serious," is the image I created today. Using a portrait photograph from the Morguefile Free Photos I downloaded this afternoon, I Digitally Painted this piece.

My approach was fairly simple. I first opened it in Picasa (the update) and I heavily applied the HDRish tool to the portrait. I increased the Value and Radius, both. This highlighted the lines and pores of the face, as well as the shadows and highs.

I saved that iteration and opened in Corel Painter 11. There I used all Digital Watercolor Brushes, a Wash Brush and a Dry Bristle Brush to paint this very Serious Man's Portrait.  I Appended the Flesh Tone Palette and the Earth Tone Palette to the basic color starter one. I selected lighter values to begin with and built up the shadows and lines gradually with darker Flesh Tones.

I painted the small parts of his shirt a purple I had selected for some punch. I decided that I would mirror that color in the face around the shadowed areas. It tied the image in together nicely. I saved that iteration.

Next in Corel PSP Pro X3 I upped the Saturation Vibrancy by 33 and then added as another layer my signature with the property Lighten. I merged the layers. It was already a small display size download, so no adjustment was needed there.