Grace Lavery Digital Media Blog

  The final product

  I began with an image I thought would work as a good base for my piece, this one allowed for a lot of open space I then layered around the initial subject, this one for example in the background to add depth I would tend to try and focus on the singular part of the image I am masking to make sure it was pasted in place and all the elements were in tact Focusing also allowed for me to get all the shadows correct not the subject so their weren't any floating aspects I then varied the amount of subjects I wanted in my piece to see which ones would unify, draw focus, or create movement in the piece. I did consider cropping the image down to cut off the subjects to the right of the image, however it appeared to cluttered in my opinion so I decided to stick with my original plan After a lot of poking out eyes and making sure everyone was placed in position, this turned out to be the final composition.

  I began with drawing my forms on one layer and getting my swatches on the value scale on another layer. I chose the color green and then created my scale from lightest to darkest hues, adding swatches along the way. After, I created a new layer to add the secondary values, with the brush on 50% I shaded between the tones. I then began the blending process with the mixer brush. I hid the background layer so white wouldn't get mixed into all the tones and then created a new layer for blending, it took some time (like about 30 minutes) but I blended each individual shade into one another.  I brought back the white background and began on adding the swatches to forms. Once again I created a new layer and started the process again, this time using a directional light force to depict where the lightest and darkest values would be placed. After the initial swatches were placed I created a new layer for the 50% shades just like on the value scale. I then just continued the same blen...