Inspired by many street artists and advertisements, I wanted to do one of these face-painting, background melting photos. I usually prefer photo tricks to PhotoShoping, but since none of my favorite models were neither close, nor willing to do the real thing (even if I actually asked them to pose), I did the next best thing - a paintingware.

First, I took a picture of Tina's 12 year old painting. It is nice, colorful, and brush strokes are visible. Perfect for what I had in mind. For this to work, I took it with 'natural' light (a ceiling light), so shadows would be very visible, giving it 'real' look.

Next step was to get one of my recent Tina's photos where both eyes and smile are visible. In a real thing, we'd paint over eyelids and take a photo while she is keeping her mouth and eyes shut, but in my case I was not trying to hide her, but to make sure that she can be seen. This is a difference in goal when you are doing the real thing or mimicking it.

Everything was done in the PaintShop Pro X6. Overlapping two photos was easy, and I just had to resize one of them to get proportions right. Moving her a bit to the left, made a better balanced image, and left a signature readable.
Several copies of Tina's layer were made and parts removed so her face could be transformed to look like paintbrushed, eyes, teeth, and bottom part left untouched. One layer was a shadow (no contrast and darkened), and offset to look like a real shadow. Her picture was slightly offset as well to make it more believable. Face was desaturated, so only darkness and lightness would be visible. Warping brush was used to show 'painted' look on the bottom edge. Again, this is something I'd hide with a real paint, but emphasize in this case.

Whole process took me about 45 minute, including writing this text, and it was a lot of fun.
Tina, are you willing to do a real thing now?

~~~

Тина Камелеон

Деца знају да се крију од родитеља, али ти трикови су добро чувана тајна. Ово је једна од ретких слика те метаморфозе пре него што је потпуно завршена. Ова техника је веома слична тинејџерском систему игнорисања родитеља, само окренута у супротном смеру, где они постају невидљиви уместо нас.