Merlin

This image was created using Photoshop 6 and Painter 7 using Painter's pastel brush. Immediately below is the final image which is 5x7 inches, printed using an Epson 1160 inkjet printer on Strathmore watercolor paper. The succeeding images discuss how I worked to create Merlin who rules my sister's household.

The image below is the original scan into Photoshop 6 at 600dpi, 200% and the scanned image size is 4.36 x 2.79 inches.

The print I scanned was full of spots and it took me quite a bit of time using Photoshop's cloning tool to remove them.

In Painter, I created the sketch of Merlin shown below. Rather than creating the sketch on Painter's canvas layer, I sketched and painted on a separate layer above the canvas which gave me greater flexibility when creating a background for the main image. The Painter layer is transparent in the areas that don't have paint so the main image does not have to be cut out of the white canvas background when placing the image on a new background.You can't see it here but in Painter, only the sketch lines would show, there wouldn't be any white background.