much better !


well noise

when i started making coverart for my mp3's and imitated record labels, i used a plain color with text on top
and that looked too clean

then i discovered to add noise to it, and instantly it looks much better

That's awesome! Love the texturing.

Stunning!!! The balance is a lot better and you did the right thing shading the face instead of adding eyes. Lovely work.

esper: i got the point about the noise in general, i just didn't understand what it meant in relation to my picture, but i think i figured it out now - you were talking about the problems i had with the floor, right? it never ocurred to me to try just putting in a little noise on the single colour fills for the floor, don't know why.
merrak: thank you! i worked a lot on the texturing, glad you liked it.
erisian: thanks again ! it turned out much better than i feared when i posted the first version and it's much thanks to helpful comments - from you among others.

This came out nicely. It has a sort of abstract style that makes me think of arabesque medieval paintings or maybe as a scene from an older version of the Arabian Nights. Shis stylization is further enhanced by the lack of established light and shadow. The floor's persepective is off but that the style in general makes this more feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. I also like that her face is relatively vague, adds some mystery. I like the result here AnMal, would work work well as a print I think.
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Griatch

AnMal - Really nice and capture the theme nicely.

griatch: tack! i'm a great fan of old indian and persian paintings and of the art nouveau style, which shows in much of what i do. i'm actually a fan of "flat" art styles in general, so i try not to put any emphasis on light and shadow. but i have to admit that the floor was most of all a matter of laziness, if i hadn't been so tired of working on that @ # $ % ^ & floor (i spent so much more time on the floor than on any other part of the picture, mostly because it took so much time to find the right floor) i would probably have corrected the perspective properly while i was at it instead of just making some quick and rough corrections.
he4rty: thank ya - nice of you to stop by and leave a nice comment

@ Anmal

very nice , and nice also the shelf, with candles framed panting
Prospective may look a bit strange but is correct for that style
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
a suggestion that may also have a good effect on how the prospective if perceived:

I will make pop out a bit more the dancer , a simple way to do it would be

1) select carefully the dancer
2) copy visible /paste as new layer
3 )now set top layer mode to multiply and lower opacity at taste ,
4) try also as alternative overlay
5) you may even dup this new layer again and try a combination of bothoverlay /multiply

i suggest to keep opacity of those new layers low ,to make pop out her more , but not too much more

This i believe will move more the visual focus on the dancer and as by effect also made the prospective more "realistic " (well prospective will not change but may change how would be perceived, because colours and contrast boost will set the dancer more in FG)

photo comix: thank you ! i did experiment with layer modes, contrast and different kinds of colour treatments on the dancer - i thought some more saturation on her would look good, as you say it would put her more in the foreground. but in the end i decided that this is how i want it, the problem i saw when i foregrounded the dancer more by way of colour and/or contrast was that the rest of the picture looked bland and i certainly didn't want that.
a completely different question: is "perspective" by any chance "prospettivo" or something like that in italian ? because you always use the word "prospective" rather than "perspective" - i'm not trying to correct you, i'm asking because i'm a bit of a language nerd and when i talk to other non-native english speakers here on gc i have lots of fun trying to guess what they would have said in their own languages.

fluffybunny:
yes, that is indeed an angular shaped gradient - i couldn't stop playing with them once i had started...