Heaven is watching you

It work was made for surreal competition by NVArt company. I really like surrealism, so I was painting it work with pleasure.

AURORA W.I.P.

Step 1 - The sketch

My Character Astrologer Aurora not only believes in astrology but she predicts and even influences events in her cosy fantasy world. U may agree with me, that it is much more interesting to create your own future, than waiting for someone’s execution of predictions.
I execute sketch with a pencil on a paper. «Alive» stroke is always more expressive than a cyber one. (pic 01)

After that I do the trick as I usually do: I import my scanned sketch in Photoshop and edit with Levels (Ctrl +L) for getting clear image. Next, I set the sketch layer in Multiply mode and
add 2 empty layers under the layer with my dear astrologer, one for lights and the other for the background. Actually we always have the layer background but it locked and it is not very comfortable.
Layer background I fill with a brown color and start working on the shape of figure. My main objective now is to add volume in highlights and lighter tones (pic 1)

Step 2 – Colorizing

Now it is time to start working with a color. First it would be good to take some colors for creating color tone of entire picture. It might be done somewhere in the corner of canvas in a separate layer. After that my brown background starts to fill color spots (with my help of course). Now it is important just to decide on color scheme of the whole picture. (pic 2)

Step 3 – Painting
On a next stage I usually start work on details, especially on eyes. I don’t know why but I always start to draw with eyes (It’s my own way). (pic 3) Here it is a lot of work! Usually for painting I use brushes with spatter of Photoshop brush set or make my own. I won’t tell you about long hard work on my image with traditional ways of painting but tell about nontraditional ones.
For example I need realistic texture of eye. I make the picture with somebody’s eye or find it in e-net, put it in new layer on a top layer list and set him in overlay mode. Next I little transform it with a transform tool (Ctrl+T). (pic4) and merge with main layer. Now I can make new layer for continue to making highlights and so on. That is very comfortable to do each separate thing in a new layer. (pic5) Same way you can use for making all things that should have rich structure. But if you set imagination on a first place you can do what you want.

Good Luck
Max Larin
WWW. LARIN-ART.COM

Girl Astrologer

There is the artwork in fantasy style
I've written this Image for quest-game. I know that girl's head too big but I like to distort anatomical proportion.
It is interesting for me to know what do you think about my Astrologer Girl. Please critique!