Sometimes, an image you are working on can take a life of its own. This is what just happened for ‘country girl’.
For the past few months, I have been trying to break away from the usual cliches of 3D characters (that is, something other than android-female-warrior-half naked). I believe a good way to do this is with more life like portraits.
I have been fascinated by the intensity that come through photographed portaits. A particularly striking example is the work of photographer Steve McCurry. There is something special in the way the people he captured on film are looking back at the camera.
This is what I tried to capture with this picture. One of his pictures of a little girl from Yugoslavia gave me the model I needed to learn from to capture the right expression and light, especially in the way it shines through her ruffled hair. This gave me also the occasion to use a 3D portrait as a base and bring up all the details with hand painting.
It is just as fascinating to see how a few touches of color and seemingly random strokes can bring details to a picture. Somewhere along the way, color turns into light. It is one of the closest thing to magic I can think of.