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- 1. Preparing the photo. After scanning the photo of my
- daughter and her friend, I converted the photo to grayscale
- (Mode: Grayscale) in Photoshop, increased the contrast (Image:
- Adjust: Brightness/Contrast), and used the Sharpen Edges filter
- (Filter: Sharpen: Sharpen Edges) to define the edges for
- tracing.
-
- 2. Roughing the outlines. I drew over a laser-printed
- proof to create a rough sketch, using pencil on matte acetate
- (a). I refined the tracing and added a landscape background and
- decorative borders (b). I scanned the 8-x-10-inch original at
- 300 dpi as line art and opened it in Streamline to prepare for
- autotracing.
-
- 3. Coloring the mood. In Streamline, I autotraced the
- scan, using the Outline mode (File: Convert) to define the
- shapes and capture the natural lines of the pencil drawing.
- Opening the result in Illustrator, I filled the shapes with flat
- color as a preliminary color study (a). The illustration employs
- a similar style but a brighter palette than that used in an old
- Russian illustration (b).
-
- 4. Finishing the illustration. To add a sense of depth
- and modeling to the figures and background, I made a palette of
- color gradients and refilled most of the shapes. The gradients
- are either from the original color to white, to add highlights,
- or to a darker tint, to add depth to the illustration.
-
- ˇ