With verve into the light

What a nice theme and atmosphere! YES! Welcome back Knacki.
I can feel Tim Burton vibe from your girl too (This is a compliment, not complaining )

BTW There is little bit depressive atmosphere due to such big waves opposite to a waiting little girl.. I am interesting in the story behind this great picture too..!

Oh dear! What story?
The story is, as in a lot of my pictures, given by verve
I was bored and started with some fluids. I was looking for a nice ink style that verve can achieve so beautiful.

Suddenly I saw these waves appearing and the clouds at back so I pressed d for drying

Seeing this strong force on one side, I thought that a very weak appearing counterpart would make the picture much stronger.
What is more weak looking than a young girl. Innocent. I thought about a Teddy bear in her hand but decided that would be too much.
In fact, I couldn't stand the situation very long. Luckily the fluids provided a dragon too. So I worked that out. That was good, but a dragon and a girl against waves. That was two against one. I made a blue ghost creature rising from the waves to get the balance back. A bit too much for my final taste. I deleted the creature, copied the layer and overlayed it. The dragon almost dissapeared, but I know that he is there and will protect the girl. Just in case.
You see, the "story" grew while painting. What is left from blue creature btw. is the moon to give the eye a third spot to rest on and for spending some light and reflections in darkness.

I finally see it, that the tiny little girl can make it against any force by her own, as she is not that weak as she is looking.
Innocence is strong.

Oh dear,
6 month!
Since I got my ipad pro, I started to paint on a daily basis again.
Good. But I am missing verve very much, since I am more in procreate (ipad) and try to learn more about photoshop when I am on desktop.
Now I understand the mixer brush i.e. much better. After, I went to verve. So more easiness

Anyway, today I put liquify up, canvas structure high and made some waterpaint style background which developed into following picture.
Some quick touchups & massive color correction in ps with stamped in tree & birds etc. Which I could have done in verve too.But once in PS....

[Taron]

Very nice feel, Knacki! And, yeah, the more you know, the more you get to appreciate! 8)
But you only remind me that I should really resume coding on Verve. The color correction stuff is so, so close! I had just started with the gui for it, which is halfway there, if not even closer. Danged...
...however, I"ve learned a good deal about C++ in the meantime and may think about it even harder.

Great stuff! ...feels like you're finding a very distinctive style in terms of material, too.

great image, dear Knacki - nice to see you again

Thanks a lot!
For me, it's kind of essential having some blending and colour correction stuff, as I often just start without knowing where to end.
At some point I realize that I could do this or that, and sometimes I have to throw away everything.
But that's quite relaxing in comparison to do something keen on some precise theme, as I often have to do in real life.

The Gradient Map is an explosion of possibilities.

This is the naked verve pic:

Jungle_Verve_Naked.jpg (248 KiB) Viewed 6689 times

Gradient Map

Jungle_GradientMap.jpg (197.39 KiB) Viewed 6689 times

And finaly an extra layer with hard light mix and touch ups a

Jungle_Temple.jpg (248.23 KiB) Viewed 6689 times

[Taron]

I can almost promise you, I will have some fun creating my set of color correction tools. First is only a curve tool, similar PS, but with some additional powers that should make them nicer to adjust, I believe. But later on, I may really go to town with fancy treatment options that could make those in between hoops of PS obsolete, hopefully!

Edit: Cool to hear, taron, very cool. I wrote this meanwhile you already answered.
My thoughts about you doing some colour stuff is at the end and was written before I read your post

Or an example I made yesterday either but PS.

Lighthouse1.jpg (134.63 KiB) Viewed 6688 times

Gradient Map really saved this thing:

Lighthouse-GradientMap.jpg (239.28 KiB) Viewed 6688 times

Sure, one could get there with curves etc either. But I like the dramatically changes and the inspiration you get from Gradient Maps.

Anyway, whatever you'll do taron, it will be beautiful.
I recently understood the mixer brush in PS much better. Cool stuff but very complicate and anything else than intuitive.
Finally I came to this part where one can paint a piece and take this as an brush, like you made for verve.
But no change in colour etc. possible.
After, I went to verve and smiled all the time.

[Taron]

Anyway, whatever you'll do taron, it will be beautiful.
I recently understood the mixer brush in PS much better. Cool stuff but very complicate and anything else than intuitive.
Finally I came to this part where one can paint a piece and take this as an brush, like you made for verve.
But no change in colour etc. possible.
After, I went to verve and smiled all the time.

But, honestly, I cannot possibly paint with anything else anymore. I've ruined my joy to deal with PS or ArtRage or anything...

When it comes to natural painting, there is no option to verve.
But I have a funny, wired problem painting in verve.
The app itself does so many things that looks so beauty in a few strokes, that I easily get lazy.
Trying to let the app do what I should do.
Tweaking liquify & bumps and lights.

Crazy, isn't it?