APP Home (AOI): 'Unveiling Wonderland Screenshots' Contin.

After doing a test print on A3 I was able to pick up on some of the things I could develop, so I went back into Photoshop to develop it further.

Refining the Glow

One of the things I picked up on was that the glow surrounding the Big Ben weren’t refined enough, as the line art was too visible. I created a layer named ‘light fixes’ and with the soft brush in a very light blue (slightly lighter than the glow that was already there), I went around the Big Ben and Westminster Palace again. I made sure that the brush was very small so that it was more obvious. I also went around the bus and the bridge. 

Deepening the Shadows

Due to the fact that the glow was much brighter meant that I had to deepen the shadows, and so I started to add in darker shadows on the areas where it was closest to the glow. I also noticed that I hadn’t shaded the windows, so I also added shadows there as well. I made a new layer for all of these dark shadows called ‘Shadow Adjustments’, and for the light on the windows I had to create a new layer. I used a low opacity soft brush to do the reflection, as I didn’t want it to be too distracting.

Cleaning the Lineart

There were some areas where the pen had blotted on the page, so I tidied this up as best I could by using both the lasso tool and deleting it, and the eraser tool.

Blurred Watercolour Background

One aspect that was quite worrying was the slight blurriness of the watercolour layer, so I tried to resolve this by sharpening the layer. 

This, however, didn’t seem to make much of a difference so instead I just scanned the painting again.

I realised that the painting was just a little bit bigger on A4 so where it went over the scanner it blurred slightly; I put two and two together and realised that this was the cause of my problem. I scanned in two versions: one where the top went over the edge, and the other the bottom.

I brought up these two versions in Photoshop and decided that the one where the bottom went over the edge was better, so I placed the one with the top over the edge on the upper layer. Then I erased the areas around the top so I could keep its “bottom”, as it were. This solved my problem! I had the perfect top, and perfect bottom, which was a combination of these two scans.  

The result

Conclusion:

By printing out my painting I was able to look at all of the adjustments that I needed to make a lot more clearly. This is because I could see how it would look when up on the wall, and it was at a larger scale so I could have a closer look at it.

Luckily I didn’t print out on ‘proper paper’, or I would’ve realised my mistakes all too late! This has shown me the importance of test printing.