[see]

to all and everything. Its great to see your steps.

[Xirus]

Looks great so far.

The hair of the girl looks a bit stiff. I would expect it to flow down from the guy's hand onto the pillow rather than beeing at that angle.

[Mon]

awesome!!
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[Steven Stahlberg]

Thanks guys. Here is the finished version:

A higher res version here.

[Max]

Steven, this is simply amazing!!
It remembers me of one of Michelangelo Mersi's images.
It really has this "old master style"....keep up the good work!!!

[-HoodZ-]

absolutely lovely steven!

[Chthonic Divinity]

one of the most stunning WIP threads ive ever seen.
wow!

[The Real Mark]

Great Work - saw it on cgnetworks

I like how you've made the neck kind of bulge out a bit from the hand pulling it up towards the knife.

Not sure if this was answered before, but can I ask how you got teh patern to follow the folds in the curtain? Did you just simply paint that on?

anyhoo well done

[Steven Stahlberg]

Yeah, I was just winging it, you can tell, it's not that great... I put them on, after all the folds were finished, on a separate layer in PS.

[jfrancis]

If I understand correctly, you start in grays in multiple layers with shading and hilighting going on in blend modes. Later you colorize the grays, but you still work primarily in layers and blend modes for your shading and highlights, as if you were working with 3D CG shaders in a renderer?

We've been discussing it a bit over here:

http://www.gfxartist.com/community/forum/37230

[tsunami]

wow..just wow
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[JesperGB]

Hi Steven

I must say as all the others! It's amazing.. I want to learn from you

How do you get from greyscales into colors? Do you always work this way, start with greyscale image and then work with colors? Do you pick areas of the bodyparts and then Hue/saturate it to get the different colour tones on the bodyparts? For example the leg - it has more than one base color - how do you get those different colors - when working from the greyscale as a start?
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/Jesper GB

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[del3030]

amzing i love how you show the process of how you changed it!!
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[Steven Stahlberg]

Thanks!
jfrancis, I like to work from line to tone to color, because this simplifies the complexities involved, at least for me.
About the layers, and the discussion on gfxartist.com, it's not as complicated as you may think... the main reason why I have different layers is simply to separate background, middle-ground and foreground, and maybe a few other important items. After the initial colorizing - which can be done in many ways and it doesn't really matter which way you use - I start painting with a more or less opaque 'Normal' brush. I do occasionally get into temporary layers and selecting and filtering and Curves and Colorbalance etc, but this will usually be small localized bits, mostly because there's a texture there I don't want to paint over.

JesperGB, yes a bit of all of what you said. As for different colors, nothing is easier with the brush set to Hue or Color and sliding the Hue around the color wheel. To make the effect very subtle and controllable, do this on a temporary extra layer, or Fade each brushtroke after its done.

[allpetter]

I don't know if I want to paint more or stop completly,
doing something completly different!

Definitely a masterpiece Steven!
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