Some work 08-02-05
 

All paint/pen/photography/scanned textures, compiled in photoshop.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/sweep.jpg
Untitled

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/sannsimple.jpg
Untitled

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/phf.jpg
Paris Hilton is comforted by her friend (this scene is touching)

Superb work! The mix of paint and pen is really outstanding and original.

Can I ask how you did the one with Paris Hilton step by step?

I've just checked through my folders and I can't find the older version of that picture that has all the layers seperated. I find I end up with 100+ layers a lot of the time lately, so I tend to flatten images at various stages to make them easier to work with, and stop myself tweaking things forever.

Here are some of the main elements the picture is made up from. There's a lot of layering and painting/erasing with a tablet that brings it all together. I'm going to try and run through doing the picture again quickly from memory - it won't be very precise because I tend to make more changes to things than I really remember, but hopefully it's better than nothing.

The main elements I used:

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/danes.jpg
Photograph of 2 great danes - this wasn't taken by me, I can't remember where I got it from. The main thing I was interested in was the angles of the paving slabs and the stairs in the background.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/envelope.jpg
Scan of an envelope, used for texture.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/photocopy.jpg
A photocopy of an old painting I did, used for texture/structure.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/negative.jpg
A photograph of an old painting I did, used for texture/structure.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/cardpaint.jpg
A painting of Paris Hilton and her friend, done on cardboard. I tried to keep this quite rough, to keep the painted texture. It's easier to smooth parts out in photoshop than it is to rough them up, at least in some ways.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/tabf.jpg
A tablet painting of Paris' friend. I was playing around with the idea of using the tablet to get a more "painted" effect directly in photoshop to break down the seperation between painted element/photoshopped element. I think I still like having "real" painted elements more though.

These are only 2 of the sketches I did of Paris Hilton and her friend. I used about 5 different ones, for various different elements. For some reason I found Paris Hilton very hard to draw - she's a very distinctive looking person, but I'm still not sure exactly why.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/buckup.jpg
The lettering used on the wall in the background - it's from the album "Buck up princess" by Josh Martinez.

wauw! I didn't think it contained so many layers! FASCINATING! :D

So how long does it usually take you to complete a job like that?

Ok - this is a re-working of the orignal image, so it won't be 100% accurate. It might also be misleading, as I normally have a rough idea of what I want a picture to look like, and then see where it goes, as opposed to an exact idea. Because of this, it's a lot quicker and misses a lot of the small elements that I normally like to have in there. Hopefully it'll still give you an idea of how I work.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph1.jpg
Stage 1 - this is actually 2 copies of the photo of the street, and 2 copies of the envelope texture. Top to bottom they are layered as: Envelope (linear burn), Street (hard light), Envelope (hard light), Street (normal). Both the street layers are stretched horizontally.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph2.jpg
Stage 2 - I roughly erased the areas of the street photos I didn't want using a tablet.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph3.jpg
Stage 3 - I layered 2 copies of the photocopy of a painting on top. The first one is set to "soft light", the second (higher) is set to "pin light", and I erased various parts of it using a tablet.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph4.jpg
Stage 4 - I dropped a section of the photograph of a painting over the top as a "screen" layer.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph5.jpg
Stage 5 - I added 3 elements from the photograph of a painting to the top of the image, in order from the top they are "lighten" (the light bit in the top right), "exclusion" (the dark bit in the top right) and "overlay" (the strip across the top that makes it bluer).

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph6.jpg
Stage 6 - added the wall to the background. This was made up of quite a few different layers, so I've just done a lazy version of it here. The text is brough over the top of it as a "lighten" layer so that the white stands out whilst the texture shows around it.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph7.jpg
Stage 7 - added table to foreground. This was done by drawing a circle around a coffee cup using pen/paper, scanning it, converting it to a "colour burn" layer then using free transform to drag it out and give it perspective (dragging the bounding box from a square to a trapezium). I then painted the rough area of the circle out using a tablet.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/ph8.jpg
Stage 8 - brought the various paintings/drawings of the 2 figures into the picture. There's a lot of layering and specific erasing/additional drawing here. It'll be pretty hard to run through exactly what I did, but if you want me to run through this stage in more detail let me know. The main things I use include putting line drawings over the top as either darken/colour burn/linear burn layers, putting painted textures on as darken/colour burn/overlay/lighten/hard light/pin light layers, erasing bits of layers to show other parts I want to get in the picture, and playing with the opacity of various layers to let others show through. I also work on the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation of individual layers and, once the image is flattened, the whole thing.

Hope this is some help.

No. What you've shown me is enough to give me an idea about how much work you've put into this and how you make these illustrations in general :)

It really is an impressive work progress and a great inspiration to me! I've mixed pen, pencil and water colors before but I've never thought about adding extra filters to my illustrations/paintings in Photoshop. I think I'm gonna try that sometime because it obviously adds a bit more to the work :)

these are pretty nice..i like the second one the best..i think it has a nice balance.