Art 2

This was done using Gimp 1.2 (with standard extras and perl-fu)

This built on the techniques of the previous work and did a few more things as well.

This is the final artwork, Avon turning to stone:

  1. Find colour photo of character, tweak it if you want first, and then remove all background. Save the selection as a channel, or save the Layer Mask as a channel. You will need it later.
  2. Select -> None
  3. Duplicate the layer twice. Call one "face1" and the other "face2".
  4. In the "face1" layer, use the Select-Elliptical-Regions tool to select a portion of the face.
  5. Invert the selection. Feather selection (by a fair amount). Cut out the remainder of the layer with Edit -> Cut. Hide.
  6. Make "face2" active. Invert the selection again, so that it's an oval again. Enlarge the selection (Select -> Grow), invert, feather, and cut. This should leave you with a larger section of the face.
  7. Desaturate face2.
  8. Make another duplicate of the original person layer. Call it "postered".
  9. Desaturate "postered" and posterize it (8 colours).
  10. Duplicate "postered" and call the duplicate "bump-map-template".
  11. Make a new white layer.
  12. Hide everything but the white layer and "bump-map-template".
  13. Merge Visible Layers.
  14. New layer, white, called bump; bump-map it with combined-bump-map-template.
  15. Follow the proceedure for Carving effect to make Shadows and Highlights layers from the bump layer.
  16. Make new white layer called "texture-stone". Fill with Slate pattern.
  17. Now, we could have left it at that, but I wanted to do something more; actually have a different background than just Slate. So, go back to that original selection you saved to a channel, and convert to selection.
  18. Invert the selection. Increase the size of it by a few pixels, feather if need be. Invert the selection again.
  19. Make sure the texture-stone layer is active, and Edit -> Cut. Now you have the stone texture just behind the Person, while the rest should be transparent.
  20. Reorder the layers if need be in this order:
    • face1 (mode: normal)
    • face2 (mode: normal)
    • postered (mode: screen)
    • shadows (mode: multiply)
    • highlights (mode: screen)
    • texture-stone (mode: normal)
    • bump-map-template (if you want to keep it; otherwise just delete it)
    • original person layer (if you want to keep it; otherwise just delete it)
  21. The background I finally stuck with after much experimentation was made up of three layers, created as follows:
    1. New white layer at bottom, called texture. Pattern fill with Slate.
    2. New white layer above "texture", called "overlay whirl".
    3. Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma
    4. Desaturate.
    5. Filters -> Distorts -> Whirl-and-Pinch; tweak this until you like it.
    6. To make this fade in the middle, Add Layer Mask, and then do a black-to-white radial gradient fill in the layer mask.
    7. Change the mode to Overlay.
    8. The third layer adds the brown tint. Make a new white layer between "overlay whirl" and "texture".
    9. Colour fill with the chosen colour (in this case, brown).
    10. Make this fade away at the edges by adding a layer mask, and then doing a white-to-black radial gradient fill in the layer mask.
    11. Change the mode to Color.
  22. Flatten image and save as .jpg Undo and repeat for different backgrounds if you can't make up your mind.