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Little Bluets

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Photoshop CS5, Wacom Intuos4, one week of work, with a little bit done each day...

I wanted to try out painting a profile portrait without references, and this was what I ended up with.

She is a character from one of my books. Her name is Zilo. This is from the very end of the book where she gets shot by her boyfriend (yes, on purpose!) and, because other people around are forced off to to other things at that moment, she is left dead on the concrete. All anyone has time to do is lay a sprig of bluets on her hair as they dash off into the night. I originally had a pool of bloody red coming out beside her head...but then I thought that was too gruesome. It also ruined the composition, so...no. :) I also contemplated painting in a bullet wound, but she gets shot in the chest, not the head, and that really WOULD be pretty gory.

Bluets are a kind of Centaurea, whose name comes from ancient Greek mythology. A centaur was supposed to have used the plant to heal wounds after battle. So maybe there is hope that this isn't the end for her?

No references, except for glancing at my husband's ear to make sure I got the swirly bits right. :)

Also - HELP?!-

I'm having headaches getting the blacks in the hair to look good in .jpg form. It looks awesome in Photoshop but then after I save it...bleh. Any advice?? Maybe it will look ok on some monitors, but on mine, I can clearly see where the compression has happened at the border of some of the blacks. bmp. looks fine but who wants to try and work with an unwieldly 50+MB image? .png and .tiff look equally bad, btw.

Maybe you could all be so kind as to tell me what it looks like on your monitor?
Image size
5400x3600px 2.77 MB
Comments50
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KarahRobinson-Art's avatar
this is beautiful :wow: