Painting a Wizard

So the rough idea for the poster for The Tempest was approved by the board and now I get to finish painting it for real. It is interesting, this project has really sparked a resurgence in my interest in painting in Adobe Photoshop. One of the strange things I find is that with certain skills when I do not use them for a while, they somehow continue to develop without any input from me. Costuming is like that and apparently Photoshop skills are as well.

I'm working on the faces first because I find them very interesting but I think Gary's hands will be the hardest part because he couldn't hold them steady so there will be a lot of work to make them look right.

Here is the repainted version of Cherie's face (a bit left to do). You can see from the finger beside her what I mean about the hands. I'll post the finished version when I get it.

OK I have Gary's face repainted. I think he almost looks a little like Johnny Depp as an old man here. Now on to the hard part.

I had to pull out all the magic onto another layer so that I could fix Gary's cloak and hands. The hands were really hard because they were so blurry, but I think I finally got them. I used a texture on the shirt and coat to try and give it a feeling of cloth.

Ok so it is a day later. Last night I finally got the information for the poster and was able to integrate that. Now I only have to finish the logo treatment and then repaint the ship/water/magic effect area and then it will be ready for revisions. I had to by a font called Arcanum for the logo, but I think it is a very well designed and unique script and so I think I'll get quite a bit of use out of it.

So finally I got the ship and storm repainted with the help of some stock images because I had no desire to paint a galleon from scratch. I also worked on the type a bit. There are a few more small places where there are sharp edges that I need to fix but I am leaving it for tomorrow when I can do a big print of it and check that for errors. It is easier for me to see problems in a physical print than it is on y small screen.

So here is pretty much the finished piece barring revisions from the BOD and my tweaking. Hurray!