Beckinsale Graceling

While working on my overlay project and making my face a lion, I was working on my culminating for English. The culminating was we had to read a book and take a character from the book and make an essay on them. I read the book Graceling. Of coarse, I read this book before and absolutely loved it, and there is also a prequel/sequel. You can make it both. A graceling is someone with two different coloured eyes and they have a special talent. This talent could include mind reading, seeing the future, fighting, etc, but no two gracelings are the same. Katsa is special, she has the grace of killing. She has one blue eye and one green eye, and she was the inspiration for me. Due to the fact this isn't a real person, I got inspired while watching the movie Underworld ( I'm a big fantasy freak ) and thought about using Kate Beckinsale. She does a lot of kick-a** movies and I think she would be the person Katsa. Though the age difference might be a little bit of a problem, considering Katsa is supposed to be 18, and Kate Beckinsale is 30-40. Anyways, here is how I made my Katsa.

Firstly, I had to change the eyes, so I took the lasso and drew around the eye, then used a bright blue colour and painted over the area with the paint brush. I changed the eyes by changing their normal, and having it react with the original colour of her eyes. (The button around the opacity) This is how I created her dynamic different coloured eyes. Then, using the burn brush, I shadowed all around her face, making her features more prominent. Then, I used the Enhancing button to change the contrast and brightness of the picture, to also make it more dynamic. After, I found a texture that was cracked and added it to her face but overlaying it. I wanted the scars to look more raw so I took the paintbrush and painted over the lines in red, then overlayed it. I think this gives the picture more of an edge, and shows all her battles she has been through and her strength. Lastly, the blood. That was the trickiest part because I had to make it look somewhat real and not so much painted on. I used different layers and different shades of red and changed the opacity and layer. (Again, using the button around the opacity) I am not so sure about the blood but I think overall I am happy with what I did, in only 10 minutes.

- Gorecki.

Crumbled Lion Face

BEFORE: As you can tell in this picture, my face is obviously photo shopped a bit. What you don't know, is that I took this picture without makeup, and I was sick that day. Also, when you look at the picture, my eye on the left is a copy of my eye on the right. I didn't like the way my eye looked so I changed it, and luckily it worked well and looked rightly placed and real. I used the cloning brush to cover the original eye and eyebrow, then used the largest and highest quality smudge brush that I was able to use, and smudged the skin smoothly together. Afterwards, I blurred everything together to make it not look very choppy. Yes, I know this picture looks off, and that it doesn't look totally realistic, but I don't feel comfortable putting a picture of myself up that looked the way it did before I photo shopped it a bit. I hope you can respect that.

AFTER: It took a lot of effort and small details to concentrate on to make this picture end up the way it did. I had to find pictures of a lion, a henna tattoo, (Yes, I know that part doesn't make sense but I have a weird sense of style. No one really sees henna on a lion) and a picture of high quality bark. I changed the colour of my eyes, from... well whatever colour they are, to a blue colour. To do this, I painted a whole new eye over the existing eye using the paint brush, and used different shades of blue. Then, for the other eye I just copied the blue eye I had already done, and pasted it, and flipped it to fit into the right eye. Then to make it look like it was real-ish, I overlayed it onto my existing eye. Then, I added the henna tattoo. I had to erase the background colour using the paint bucket, and then overlayed it onto my forehead. I do not know why I did this, but this picture kind of reminds me of someone from NARNIA. I wanted to do something different with my face, so I found a picture of bark, and overlayed it on my face as a mask. I had to erase around my face and neck so that they were the only areas of the picture that were "barked." After, using the lion's head, I had to cut around the head using the eraser, and then I transformed it, and sized the picture to it well into my face. I had to burn this picture onto my face. Unfortunately, there was a set back. The face was too orangey and dark to match with the background of the picture, my neck and my hair. So, I found a way to make it work. I went to the Enhancing button, and changed the brightness and contrast. This worked perfectly, and I managed to make it all the same shades and colour. Then, the neck was a bit of a problem. I missed a couple of areas of the neck so I used the lasso and coped and pasted tiny areas into the non-barked areas. Then, to make sure it didn't look so copied and pasted, I blurred and smudged it a bit. I think it worked out well because it brings a bit of depth into the picture. I had some problems with my nose as well. Due to the fact that the lion picture was overlayed, the nose stuck out a bit, so I had to use the smudge brush, and I smudged my nose down and out, to give it more of a lion face, and to match up with the lion nose. I thought my picture was finished but something was still missing. Then I realized, I had a cat on my face but no whiskers. In the end, I used the airbrush in white to brush out whiskers onto my face, which I think was the finishing touch. Hope you find this picture intriguing.

You can think of this picture any way you want it to be, but for me it is that we all have animals inside us that our dying to get out, only, mine is ripping and crumbling to get out. We are all different. Also, if you noticed the lion I used was a male instead of a female. I have nothing against the female lions but I just prefer the male lions. They are fluffier and a lot cuter. :P

- Gorecki.