Photomanipulating a Kirin

People often ask me, "How do you do that?" So here is an explanation of the craft behind my next piece, a kirin.

1) Start with a background. That gives you some idea of the lighting/color scheme of the image. Then sketch out the basic shape of the kirin. This is the most important step because the drawing is what you use as a base. You will paste all of your photos onto it.

2) Gather spare parts from photographs. They may come from different animals, but try to keep them similar enough that they will fit together. Use the eraser and lasso to cut and paste and smooth the edges. Setting the eraser at low opacity helps with blending.

3) As you put the pieces together, use image>adjust>color balance to make the different fragments all the same color. That way you can blend them.

4) The smudge tool is very helpful for fur. Use it to make long strands and to blend the hair into the body. Tinkering with layer properties, like "multiply" and "screen," can also be helpful when overlaying textures. The back scales are a photo set to "multiply" and about 50 percent opacity.

5) The rough kirin. But she looks pasted onto the background (which I changed because I liked sunrise better). Now it's time to try to make her blend into the picture.

6) Color and lighting are the most important aspects of the kirin w/ respect to the background. To make her look like she is lit by the sunrise, I made a copy of her and adjusted the color balance and brightness. Then I erased portions of it with the low-opacity eraser. Same for the fur, only I set the second fur layer to "screen" so that it will brighten the image. You can see the four layers as they look separately.

7) This is how the layers look overlapping. Now the kirin is lit by the sunrise. She's much closer to being inside the picture.

That's pretty much how it's done. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I can tell you that dramatic lighting helps. It's very difficult to make a photomanipulated creature look like it belongs in a picture with bland lighting. Clouds help, too.