Song to the Siren - Progress and the final piece

 When I had finished my research and sketching (See Workshop book) I then went about drawing my Sailor for the final illustration. Adding in the fish as well so that I could later change the colours or details later in photoshop if I felt the need to. This was the progress of the drawing through to being finished and inked. 

With the scanned image I firstly removed all the white background pieces with the magic wand tool and some manual eraser work for hard to get places such as the beard/hair and tattoos.

I also played around with a few effects and colours to see what might happen and if anything could be used as part of the final outcome.

When I was starting to cut things into layers (e.c - Sailors hair, tattoos, fish) I copied an extra layer of fish to see what colours might look best and hid the original layer from view. When I re selected the layer I really liked the overlaying of the fish and decided to keep it. As I went on I also decided to do another ring of fish, changing the colour and shape as it looked much more dramatic and really framed the piece.

Seeing as this project was limited to colour use, as well as not being able to use solid black, I changed the outlines to a dull blue and hair outlines to dark brown. I also wondered at first about giving the Sailor blue-ish skin to have a drowned, underwater effect, but each shade I tried didn't look right.

 When I had gotten the right skin tone I was after and finished changing the outlines colours, I tried playing with backgrounds. I knew I wanted something simple and changing from dark blues to light to get a deep sea effect/look. This was a test with the Liquidify tool, but it looked far too rough for what I had in mind. 

 Adding a grain effect and slight glow for a test, also changing the brightness/saturation. Really didn't like the grain effect so that wouldn't be added, but the glow effects would be played around with some more. The lighter and third layer of fish was added also. 

 The background was put through a blur filter to mix the colours together in a much smoother outcome. The glow effect around the sailor was brightened and stretched outwards too. 

Back to testing out colours with the sailor, I felt that his skin tones needed darkening a bit so more playing around with colours, saturation and brightness. 

 The last things added were more glow effects near the top to create the real underwater look and a bed of deep sea coral too. After creating rough, rock-like shapes I then carefully painted coral shapes and copy-pasted them into different areas. A second layer was added for more depth, which looked much more impressive. The layer at front was darkened and finished with a 'outer shadow' filter to enhance the depth further. 


When I thought I was finished though, I realised I didn't like the very middle piece of the coral bed. it was far too plank so I added in more coral shapes and changed the colours around just a bit more for extra framing. More shading effects were added too.

 When looking around for the shadow effect, I also found a lens flare effect. I added it for testing and realised that it added just what I was looking for to fill the empty, boring part in the middle of the sea bed. 

I decided to keep the lens flare because it also looked much more underwater with it added. It reminded me of the photographs people take when the camera is just below the surface and catches the light of the sun of the surface of the water.

I also added a smaller flare to the top of the piece to give the effect of seeing the sun through the water. I wasn't sure if it would work, but when added I really liked it and wanted to keep it. With that, I was happy with the final piece and added the lyrics in the Photoshop template. 


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