One Four: Tibouchina 3 (Mask)

Week 3 in the One Four Challenge: Mask.

For week 3 in the September One-Four Challenge, I’ve gone for something out of the ordinary. The description of Mask is fitting, I think, for not only does the result remind me of the sort of face mask one might wear at Carnival in Venice, but I made use of layer masks in Photoshop to get the look.

There are three layers in this image — the flower photo, a photo of a girl’s face that I took in Vanuatu, and the flower photo again. I selected the top flower photo and created a layer mask, which I then applied to the face layer to restrict how much of the face was revealed. On the face, I darkened darks and increased contrast to add drama to the eyes. Both flower layers have saturated colours, whereas the girl’s face is in black and white. The bottom flower photo and the face have a blend mode of normal at 100% opacity. The top flower photo uses overlay blend mode, also at 100% opacity. Finally, on the face layer I used the eraser at 50% opacity to trace over the stamens (i.e., removing parts of the face layer) so they showed through from below, giving the girl rather startling “eyelashes”.

Here are the versions from weeks 1 and 2:

Be sure to check out the tag “One Four Challenge” to see what other bloggers are doing this month.

A note about Tibouchinas: “Tibouchina /ˌtɪbuːˈkaɪnə/ is a genus of about 350 species of neotropical plants in the family Melastomataceae. They are trees, shrubs or subshrubs growing 0.5–25 m tall, and are known as glory bushes or glory trees. They are native to rainforests of Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America, especially Brazil. The name comes from an adaptation of a term for a member of this genus in an indigenous language of the Guianas.” (from Wikipedia)