Seduction

Created in Poser3, Bryce4, Photoshop 5 and PSP6. This image was inspired by Martin Murphy's "Queen" graphic. I would like to post the steps that were involved with editing my Poser figure, but I also want to offer a link to Martin Murphy's excellent tutorial of how his fabulous "Queen" graphic came to be. Please visit his website to see his beautiful gallery and check out his Queen Tutorial. Martin is a true professional and shows incredible artistic genius in his work.

Now for how this piece was create. I'm listing the steps in a very casual way, so please forgive the fact that this is not ready to be published in a text book!!! I actually wrote the following to a friend of mine in an email because she was curious about how I did my graphic:

Number one thing - in Photoshop, do EVERYTHING in layers - the clothes (or pieces of clothes), the hair, eyes, the makeup, jewelry, etc. This way, you can smudge and do special effects to the individual layers and if you end up not liking how that one layer looks, you can always delete it without effecting the rest of the graphic. Save your psd file as you go. My power kept shutting off on me, so I was saving just about ever time I added a new layer. I lost the dress when I first started and had to redo it - SCREAM!!!

To Begin:
First of all, I made my Poser figure, thinking of how I would have her leaning against a column in Bryce. I imported the image into Bryce, positioning my objects and adding my textures. I rendered the Bryce image at about 2000X1500 pixels, knowing that the larger the image, the easier it would be to paint in Photoshop. It took almost two days, just to render!

In Photoshop, I start out using the smudge tool on the first layer (background) of the image to smooth out the skin, body and face of the poser woman. Softened lots of really dark shadows and creases and there were places on her that were too bright, so I smudged those as well, because those are what tend to make the posers look like plastic.

The Dress:
UGH! PAIN IN THE BUTT!!! I started out with the dress first, because I knew that the hair might hang over part of it and should be a layer that would be above the dress. I used the polygonal lasso tool and went around the outside of her body, creating a selection that would be the dress. I chose a background image that I have that's called "silk". I colorized it to be a mauvish shade, that's not highly saturated in color. (I didn't want any startlingly bright colors in this image.) I filled the selection with this pattern (but the key is to fill it at a very low opacity, so that the body shows through it. The opacity level that I used, I think was about 25 or 30 and you can always fill it again if it's just too transparent.) By filling the selection with a low opacity fill, the body shines through a bit and give the dress more of a three deminsional look. Looks like the dress is fitted to the body, in other words. Then I smudged the edges of the dress, so that it wouldn't look so harsh and then used a grey/black color using a large airbrush tip around the edges to give an even more three deminsional look.

I drew in the mauve color of the straps and the bottom of the dress, using an airbrush with the opacity set at about 50.

I decided a bit too much leg and privates where showing through the bottom of the dress so I selected from the waist down with that same lasso tool and filled it one more time, so she wouldn't be QUITE so naked. :) There was still quite a bit showing through, but it was faint, so when I finished the whole thing, I merged (flattened) the layers and used the smudge tool to make the lines from certain parts of her legs fade away.

Hair:
Her hair was done in three layers: the bottom layer was done in black, the top layer with a shade of gray and then there was another layer of black over that. I drew the hair in with my graphics pen and then used the smudge tool to make the pointy little curling effects. Then I applied the drop shadow effects to each layer to give the soft 3D effect.

The Pearls:
Just used one of the pearls that I made a long time ago and resized it very small and copied them in, arranged them where I wanted them and then applied the drop shadows. After that I went to Photoshop's "Adjust Hue/Saturation/Lightness" and darkened the pearls one by one, because they were too bright for this image. The pearls on the left are a bit darker than the pearls on the right, because I wanted to make it seem like they were in the shadow of her chin.

The Eyes:
Zoomed in reeeally close on the eyes and used the smudge tool to smear the shadows around so they would not be so harsh and to shape the eyes the way I wanted them. Then I used a paintbrush tip with a dark green for the iris of each eye, then chose a slightly lighter shade of green, with a slightly smaller brush tip and put dots on each eye, which gives it a three deminsional look. Put in the black dots for the pupils of the eyes and used a lighter color of green (almost white) to put the tiniest little highlight dots on the iris area to really give it the three deminsional effect. This looked really cool up VERY close, but it's hard to see in the images that you've seen.

Makeup:
TOO MUCH FUN! My favorite part of the whole process. Just like putting on my own makeup. I shaped the lips how I wanted them, because I wanted full pouty looking lips. (Wish I could shape my OWN face this way!! HA HA!!) Smoothed out lots of lines around the mouth. Used the lasso tool again around the lip area and filled with a shade of mauve at a low opacity again, because I wanted the crease between the lips to show through. Then I darkened the shade using the same Hue/Saturation/Lightness tool. I smudged the outline of the color just a bit to soften it. I used the airbush at a low opacity to add a lighter highlight color to the lips. I added the blush to the cheek area using the airbrush at a VERY low opacity. I added a little shadow on the chin for a dimple. Finally, I added a bit of lighter color to the tip of the nose, the top of the cheekbone area and the chin.

After everything was done, I merged all the layers and used the smudge tool to soften and shape certain areas of the image. And THAT'S ABOUT IT!