What Was I Thinking?!? Opinions & Observations Please

[Charlene5]

This one has been lurking in my work folder since the end of November.  As of today I am officially sick of it.  I thought it would be a few hour job and it turned out to be something I did over three or four times. There wasn't a spot anywhere that wasn't damaged.   I've reached the point of diminishing returns on my picking at it plus I can no longer see it.  Please tell me what needs fixing so I can finally return it.   Thanks :)

[klassylady25]

The littleone is sitting on their knees with them tucked to your left, but the feet are not showing just a small part of the calf.  Hope that helps.



C :loveit:

[Tess (Tassie D)]

I think the boy? is also sitting on his knees as well. The girl has lace on the bottom of the dress and a ribbon on the top of the sleeve.
Maybe darken the childrens faces on the edge closest to each other to give them more definition?
A very hard one though, you've done a great job. :up:

[cmpentecost]

I think the girl is looking more to her left (our right), than straight ahead.  IMHO, I think her eyes should be in the same direction as the little boy's eyes.  Otherwise, you've done a really nice job on a very difficult photo!

Chris

[schen]

Wow! You have done a great job pulling all that out of a difficult one.  I would suggest using burn tool to darken the little one's hair and add more shading to the faces and upper bodies.

I love your work on the hair.  :wnw:  One of these days, I have to learn how to do that.  I read enough tutorials already.

[Charlene5]

Thank you all.  Of course tthose are knees - I don't know where I got the idea they were shoe soles.  I thought it was an exceptionally short-legged kid :)  It is, btw, a girl.  I've done both of them as adults.  The younger one was a strawberry blonde.   I'll work on the suggested changes tomorrow morning when my eyes are new.

Chen the hair happened entirely by accident.  I knew I was going to have to paint it and the idea didn't thrill me.  I'd never been happy with my efforts.  I looked around and found what I thought was a mid-tone in the older girls hair and started painting.  After three strokes I said "Whoa, how am I doing that??"  I was getting a multi-tonal effect and I kept going.  It is an ordinary round brush, hardness zero, set to Soft Light at 50% opacity.  This is how it started - I did nothing to that right side of her head except paint with that one mid-tone shade.  I continued using the soft light/50% throughout, building up layers.  I used a box blur at 1 or 2 when I got down to the finer stuff.  The highlight that is in the large version posted above is again soft light, but this time at 100%.  I did a big gaussian blur on it then cranked down the opacity until I was happy with it.  Give it a try, you'll be amazed at how simple it is!

[schen]

Thanks for the explanation of the re-hair process.  I am hair challenged.  It will take me a while to learn that.

I see the older girl sitting on a chair with her left knee showing.  The younger one sit on the older girl's right leg.  I love these ink blot tests.

[Mhayes]

MJ, The hair is beautiful, it looks real not painted! Thanks for spelling out how you did it. I also love what you have done with the older girl's dress.  :up:  :up:

[Ratz]

MJ, lovely job on a very difficult photo. I do think that the older girl has her cheek resting on the little ones head though.
I love the hair! Well done :up:

[Hannie]

MJ, I love the hair, thanks for explaining how you did that.  Can't wait to try for myself but I don't think it will come out as good as you did!

:loveit:

Hannie

[Charlene5]

Thank you thank you ! for all your suggestions and insights.  Got up this morning and went back to work with my new eyes.  After changing the shoe soles to knees I decided that they couldn't be knees.  Her hips are canted in the wrong direction and her body would have to be longer.  I tried to work it out using the known stuff on the left side of her body but it looked daft. I moved the old sister's jaw line out a touch and made the baby's hair a little fatter and toned down the slice of background between them.  If I make the older girl's cheek rest on the baby she looks as if she has the mumps, and if I make the baby's head bigger she looks like the Great Pumpkin, so I compromised.  Added the bow back to the dress, did some more dodge and burn, and cleaned up some messy edges.  Oh I fixed the older girls gaze as well.   I think that I can honestly say that this version is the best I can do :)

[cmpentecost]

Beautiful!!!   :up:

Christine