Creative process of "The 12th Sign"

"The 12th Sign"

To create the digital art piece "Pisces" for my Zodiac Series I had envisioned the two fish swimming in opposite directions as mermaids. I started with several images that Lita and I had taken of ourselves in a "swimming" position, which gave our abs quite the workout! I had to only use one image from Lita's session but with me I used four different photos piecing together my body from one, face from another, and arms each from yet another photograph. When I finally had our bodies in place, I created the tails, fins and hair with brushes. Lita's hair was easy but changing my hair color completely and making it have depth was not an easy task! I imagined us as mermaids in the Mediterranean so an underwater like Atlantis with ruins was the only way to go, however I actually started with a photograph of the reef in Key Largo in the Atlantic. I used these two photos of the reef: From there I resized, scaled and warped to get the image to look like it was taken under the water instead of above the water. I then created a light source from the top using the Lasso tool to mark out where I wanted my light rays to fall. Next came finding "ruins" that I could use to create my Atlantis. I chose the archway from this shot taken at Armadale Castle in Scotland: And also this shot of the Glastonbury Abbey for the larger ruins: For both of these I needed to cut out the pieces that I wanted, change the colors to fit in with my overall ocean color scheme and scale them down to fit into the image. I then used this photograph taken in the Red Sea during a trip to Israel:

By placing this photo in a back layer I could bring it through and give the image a feeling of depth. I also warped it out and used it underneath the stone floor which I lowered the opacity on. Both the stone floor and the throne were stock images.

I added the text and symbols, placed Lita and I in position and added sparkles on and around us. The final step was a gradient layer in two colors chosen from my image, layered on top of the entire image and the opacity lowered just a bit so that Lita and I still came through as the main subject but the colors are slightly more muted to give the feeling of being under the sea.

This image involved numerous hours, lots of learning, a gazillion layers and tons of patience but I must say that I'm really proud of myself for following through with my artistic vision and bringing this piece alive. I'm also very excited to see where Lita takes her vision from this session and when she has it finished I will definately be posting a link to it from here. Next up for me is processing of some nature photos and then working on a few other artistic series including a "Mad Magician" series and a "Faerie" series!