Creative Portraits: Asian Girl

[Neasa]

I followed someone else's link to this site & found some great faces to practice on. Here's one that tugged at my heart. In the original she seems to have a sad expression, but is guarding it. My perception, anyway. I wanted to accentuate the sadness & eliminate the guardedness. Did I succeed? I'd love to see some more versions of her.

[palms]

How about this one been practising using sketchmaster

Palms

[Neasa]

Very nice Palms - I tried doing something similar but couldn't get satisfied with it.

A newbie question for anyone who feels like answering: this site that I linked to - do I understand correctly that anyone is free to use these pics for any non-commercial reason? I mean, you couldn't sell a painting adapted from a pic, but it's ok to practice on? There was next to no info provided by the site.

[DannyRaphael]

First off I used Levels to adjust contrast, Hue/Saturation to boost saturation and Selective Color to make the colors look more interesting (to me, anyway).

Then I tryed (for the first time) a technique called "smudge painting," where I used Photoshop's Smudge Tool to smear the pixels followed by sharpening, then smear some more, sharpen some more, then a final smear.

Under the right circumstances, I think this method has promise.

Nice pic to work with. Thanks, Neasa, for finding/posting the link to a gold mine of pics and starting this thread.

re: [do]I understand correctly that anyone is free to use these pics for any non-commercial reason? I mean, you couldn't sell a painting adapted from a pic, but it's ok to practice on?

That's how I would interpret the verbiage on the site.

~Danny~

[Drach]

It's early in the morning, I'm almost alone in office and Photoshop Elements is ready to go..
What does that mean? Right..

Edit: Did a small update

[Neasa]

Wow, Danny - that's great! The colors are much more interesting & vivd.

I've only used the smudge tool as a fixer, never thought about using it like this. I'll give it a try.

[palms]

Nice one Danny but beware smudging gets addictive ! ! ! ! !

Drach similar posting but how did you do yours ?

Palms

[Drach]

Bottom layer = colored pencil - standard setting 100%
Middle layer = coal (dark grey/beige) - lighten 100%
Top layer = graphic pen + a slight gaussian blur - multiply 80%

[Steve Conway]

Nice colorful image to work with.

Steve

[Steve Conway]

Another approach.

Steve

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Neasa

Wow, Danny - that's great! The colors are much more interesting & vivd.

I've only used the smudge tool as a fixer, never thought about using it like this. I'll give it a try.

Thank you for your kind words.

Important!
The more vivid colors came from preparing the image before smudging began. With adjustment layers I cranked up the Saturation and messed considerably with Selective Color settings before merging their effects on the original Background onto a new layer.

Smudging only smudged the "new" colors.

[kiska]

Great creations! I went to the above link and could only download the thumbnails. How do you get to the high res images? I clicked on the small image, nothing.Also control/click, still just the small one. I have a mac.

Thanks

[Swampy]

Some very nice renditions! You folks are soooo good!

Here's my attempt at a Gauguin look. Not exactly Tahitian Women, but it was fun.

[kiska]

Nevermind the download problem above. Tried a different browser and it worked.

[dbuckle]

I used 3 layers in Studio Artists then finished in PScs2.