Some New Art

[galathea]

I made some new art. At the moment I am in a pretty arts-y mood and have thematic, conceptual ideas like crazy. I hope some of them work out, but most of them are still in the construction phase at this point. *crosses fingers* Anyways, onto the art! Enjoy! :)



Don't Mess With The Winchesters: I made this wallpaper for bl_graphics's challenge 'Obsess much?' over at BF! With SN undoubtedly being my biggest obsession ever, I made this simple Supernatural promo piece. ;) This piece practically created itself, one of my fastest wallpapers so far and all made from S3 caps!

Don't Mess With The Winchesters

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Whatever It Takes: This is about one of the S3 themes that goes round in my head a lot. Sam's determination to save Dean, come hell or high water and how far he may be willing to go, to achieve that goal. Is he willing to kill, to play with dark magic or considering to take demon deals? I always wanted to work with exclusion/difference for once and this was the perfect opportunity, displaying negative!Sam on the left, an inversion to the caring and moral character that we know. Dean is willing to go, but Sam won't let him. I am quite happy how it turned out.

Whatever It Takes

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You all know the drill, no posting elsewhere and no pretending it's your own. Just for private desktop use! *g* Resources as usual over at Salt'n Burn!

Comments

[shaw012145.livejournal.com]

Both awesome ... I need 2 screens :)

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I guess I came to the rescue then! ;) Glad you like them!

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Yay for artsy Chris! I hope you've got your muse firmly chained up, now that she is back with you with such a vengeance. Make sure she understands that she is not to go wandering off again!

I luuuuurve your obsessed promo wall.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Heh, I try to bribe her into staying, made it all cosy for her. I am basically her slave really! ;)

Thanks! That Dean cap is just awesome, I had to use it! *lol*

[joans23.livejournal.com]

These are so excellent! Don't mess with the Winchesters? Yeah, baby!!

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Hehe I wanna see the person who dares to mess with them, when Dean has that expression! ;)

[impalalove]

Dude; I just like how you do the last one. It's like how you have Dean turning his back from Sam, because he wants to go, but at the same time, Sam's the one holding him back.

Love. Snagging both of them, probably will use today. ^^

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thanks Kallie! :) I am really beyond curious how that 'Sam saves Dean' plotline works out during the season!

[winterevanesce.livejournal.com]

Both of these are lovely! I shall put the first one on my desktop and the second one is awesome too - I love that exclusion/difference of Sam. Great job as always!

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's always nice to hear people using your stuff! :D

[jinxiegirl.livejournal.com]

I'm snagging both! Thanks bunches for these! They are great! *hugs*

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! And thanks, I am glad you liked them! ;)

[jacoba06.livejournal.com]

These are amazing! Can I beg for tut's. pleasssse!! :)

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

Uhm well, to write up a tutorial takes a lot of time and I didn't really do something special here *g* only some basic blending, gradientwork, texturing. If you have a concrete question though, I can try to help you. :)

[jacoba06.livejournal.com]

Ok, I can totally understand that, so my question is ... The boys look as though they pop out of the picture, did you sharpen them? And what filter did you use on their skin? That's all for now, I think. Any help you can give is greatly appreciated! Thank you :)

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Okay, well there's a couple of methods to touch up image quality and which I use depends on the ímages that I work with. First off, HQ images are a 'must' in this kind of wallpapers and if I scale a cap down more than 30% I sharpen it at least once before I transfer them to my canvas. After I finish my base composition I usually use one of the following methods on my walls, depending on overall image quality and the amount of structural details I have in a wall (very small elements like ornaments and such don't take oversharpening well, so the more you have of them in your wall, the less invasive methods you want to use.)

1. Method: The easiest method is a combination of sharpen and the smudge/blur tool. Flatten your layer, sharpen it and then smooth out pixelized areas on the skin by zooming into your canvas and work with the blur/smudge tools. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied.

2. Method: Make a flattened layer of your composition (1) and duplicate it (2). Then sharpen layer (1) and use the smart blur filter on layer (2) (the settings can vary, play around with the radius, as to what looks best to you but around 10 usually works well). Then set layer (2) to screen or soft light and play around with the opacity until you are satisfied with the result. This method is simple and works well even on images where the quality isn't top notch.

3. Method: You can use a combination of the High Pass filter and Median to touch up your images. If you have a lot of small elements in your wall, you need to handle this one with care though. Make a flattened layer of your composition and duplicate it. Use High Pass on your duplicate (the settings again vary, the smaller the images, the smaller the radius should be) and then set this layer to overlay. You will notice that this sharpened all edges in your wall. Repeat this until you oversharpened your basis and then again flatten your layers and use the Median filter (radius somewhere between 3-5) and set the opacity to 50%. Then start masking away areas that you want to have sharp and clear (eyes, noses, ears, maybe parts of the hair) with a soft brush (feather around 50%).

All these methods give good results. To create an even further 3-dimensional 'look', try to highlighten bright areas with the dodge-tool and emphasize dark areas with the burn-tool to create more pronounced shadows, but make sure it looks natural. ;)

Okay, that's it. I hope these tips are useful for you. ;)

[jacoba06.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much, will give it a go. *hugs you lots*