Kahlan: Step by step

For your pleasure, a look at the process in the Mother Confessor poster.

1. The original image. You can probably see how this lent itself so well to the idea.

2. Mapping of costume and background. I did this first on paper over a printed copy of the base image, scanned it, then vectorized.

3. Removal of background. The mapping frame made stuff like this easy.

4. Painting in of dress and trim. The trim has a Drop Shadow for a slightly raised effect.

5. Gold gradient added for dress trim. Set the Gradient tool to Difference mode, run in a few random directions to your liking, duplicate it, apply Chrome filter, set to Overlay, merge, blur, then add color.

6. Painting of face and hair. Wacom awaaaaay!

7. Additional tweaking of color contrast on face and hair. Duplicate layer, apply Find Edges, Overlay at 60%.

8. Wood grain texture applied to dress for stained glass effect, gold leaf texture to the trim, metal texture and gradient to mapping frame. Addition of necklace and black line details to the dress.

9. Initial background coloring.

10. Inner shadow applied to colors cells, plus further stained glass texture (with some cells handled individually to break up the grain lines).

11. Crystallize filter applied to castle and bridge colors for a more cobbled look. Duplicated, applied Find Edges filter, set to Soft Light.

12. Additional wood grain texture applied for overall stained glass look, plus gradient overlay for a little extra glow.

Ta-daaaaa.