It’s always a great thing to see how a designer works, it’s a great way to learn and also to progress with your own skills. Now I wanna share a case study from Ralf Krause aka Falcon White, who did this piece for Desktopography 2011. I hope you will enjoy it and free your mind on new knowledge.
1 - Like all the other elements, I cut out the main image.
2 - For the hair I used a masked picture of a woman.
3 - A cracked texture, some colour corrections and increased contrast came into play.
4 - I opened a second document to build the background with 2-3 ocean pictures that where blended together by masks.
5 - More rocks and a ship where added and on some spots I brushed some „Fog“ and turned the whole background to orange.
6 - Time for a third document. There I placed the skull and the background scenery in front of a green coloured cloud layer and started to add some smoke behind the skull‘s hair.
7 - Cut out pictures of a neck and a knight‘s armour completed the fog walker. Birds appeared in the back and the skull got a green coloured touch.
8 - In this step some shadows where brushed and using Dodge and burn I increased the contrast. The palm leaves where placed and a little bit more fog moves in.
9 - Time to place the parrot…
10 - that went through dodge and burn. The skull also got a little bit more hair..well, actually it‘s feathers. Then I made everything darker and gave the whole wallpaper a more violet colour…
11 - That changed in most spots into blue…
12 - and ended up with a green color mood with flat black tones.
