It's my intention to participate in Illustration Friday at least once per month, so here is my March entry. I especially like topics that have multiple interpretations; "shades" could be (according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary): the shadows that gather as darkness comes on; disembodied spirits or ghosts; things that intercept or shelter from light, sun or heat; color with some black in it; and, of course, sunglasses. So, yes, I picked a relatively easy meaning to illustrate.
The woman's head is a free stock photo from stock.xchng. Using Photoshop, I extracted her from the background and made three additional copies which I filtered: Crosshatch set to Linear Dodge blend mode, Find edges set to Overlay, and Poster Edges set to Normal, each also with a layer mask to remove various details. Both the orange and the yellow background are brushes from Dover Publications Chinese Stencil Designs. The yellow background has an inner glow layer effect using a lighter yellow as the glow color.
This is an alternative version; the four copies of the woman's head were flattened which resulted in a very subtle loss of detail. I then very lightly tinted her skin. The watercolor background is from Deviant Art, recolored with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.I posted the 460th link to this topic on Illustration Friday. Be sure to take a look at some of the others.
This is incredible. I love the background and how you carried it through her hair and sunglasses.
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