The Women

Who are these women? I admit to feeling a slight reluctance in appropriating these images, although they are offered free to use on sites such as Pixabay and Pexels, or in the case of the third image, as an asset included in one of the Photoshop Artistry courses I'm taking. There is something slightly odd about staring at and working on a picture of someone who is looking back at you when you have no idea of who they are or why the photo was taken. But I have to say that doing these let me flex Photoshop skills that pictures of flowers and landscapes haven't much called for. 

   

In this first image, The Beauty, the woman is indeed a beauty and I did nothing on her face but lighten the color of her lips, and I used the mixer brush to better shape her braid. Her earring was changed by stamping a bit of a lace brush over a base color. I used a Hue/Saturation layer to change and lighten the color of the yoke of her garment. Then I created a pattern with leaf brushes for the rest of the garment; and to make the folds, I painted in shadows and highlights on a neutral grey (dodge and burn) layer. The pattern around her head was done with several of Kyle Webster's foliage brushes on different layers in different blend modes. I finished with Topaz Impression for a more painterly look and added a Photoshop filter texture. 

 In Mythos, after cropping the picture below her bust and extending the background above her head and to the right, I both cloned and painted in additional hair on top of her head and to the right. Her eyes were enlarged using the Liquify filter. A bra strap showing on her shoulder was cloned out. The tip of the one piece of her necklace that was under the garment was replaced and additional light put on the necklace. I cut out some ivy for her crown and toned it to match the composition. In the background are some barely discernible trees from a winter forest photo. I added the warm colors above originally to relate to her dress which was burgundy, but ultimately I decided to change it to green. There are two painterly textures on the entire piece.

I probably did the most work on the model in Attraction. First of all, not wanting the tattoo she had all down her back, I found a great Piximperfect video about how to remove tattoos. I also used frequency separation to retouch her skin, especially smoothing out her face, subtly colored her lips and brightened her eyes. Highlights were added to hair with touches of rose-tinted white set to overlay. The background consists of two texture layers from Tangie Baxter, and some French Kiss script. The sheer tulle under her hand is from Foxeysquirrel. Finally I added three butterflies extracted from Pixabay photos.