Roberto Blake | Graphic Illustration | Paper Gangsta Girl

Paper Gangsta Girl
Like my other image Poker Face, Paper Gangsta Girl is an image inspired by a Lady Gaga song. For this image I wanted to combine certain effect in a subtle way.

I’ve seen this particular stock image used by digital artist in the past in a way that made me feel the effects took away from the image rather than complimenting what was already good about it. I tried to bring that feeling of movement and energy to the piece in a more minimalist way, while embracing a “hip hop” theme.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake | Graphic Illustration | Like A Boss

“Like A Boss”

The photography in this image is completely original. This is from last year’s photo shoot at Mertile Beach, that myself and John Covington shot together. I’m really happy with most of the shots we got that day, but this one in particular had a lot of potential and I decided to revisit it for some photoshop work rather than using a stock image.

Effects Deconstruction.
Extraction. This was fairly easy, simple use of the pen tool, the background of the ocean contrasted well enough with the model to make this painless. I prefer to use the pen tool for most of my extraction now a days, there are exceptions but I feel that it is the most accurate tool you can use for extracting images from backgrounds.

Retouching. I owe my new image retouching skills to none other than Scott Kelby. I’ve collected nearly everything that this man has written and I must say it was worth every penny. After using the healing brush to get rid of the one or two blemishes the model actually had, I used a series of layers and mask to give here slightly smoother skin and to sharpen some of the details. Following that I adjusted the curves and levels before working with the burn and dodge tools. Having accomplished that I created some dynamic lighting on the model using a duplicate black and white layer with a blue contrast filter, setting the blend mode to soft light.

Background. To offset the bronze tone of the model I used pastels surrounding her at key points. I used a soft brush and a combination of the blur tool to ge them just the way I wanted them.

Effects. For the flares I used the custom flare brushes I created for Star Girl. I placed them in places that matched well against the pastel brush areas in the background, and also on her shades. Using the pen tool I created the strokes and used the same path for the strokes for flare brushes. The next thing I worked on was the paint effects. Using a mask I used splatter brushes on the parts of the models jacket and pants that I wanted to apply the effect to. I then applied a larger set of paint splatters to the background.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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