Shine

My first entry for =AdigunPolack's contest «Element, Passion and Desire». That's the passion of an artist I admire, to whom I dedicate this work.

Elements used: satin and rose petals.

Featuring *littlechipiee .
Reference picture: [link]

In this work I have experimented a technique in Gimp for drawing pores. You have to install Gimp Paint Studio beforehand. Simply put:

Use the brush called D_normal dust;
set fluctuation to a value comprised between 1 and 3 (you might need several attempts to find the value which fits best);
use black and white for background and foreground (doesn't matter which is which)
check Colour using this gradient and leave the defaults;
create an empty layer with blend mode set to overlay, name it “skin” for example.

Start painting over the “skin” layer and be sure to pass several times over the same places for a better depth effect; even if the fluctuation is random there will be pixels nearing others with a different grey value, making the result look more like a pore.

When you're done apply a 2 pixel Gaussian blur to the “skin” layer to smooth the result. Aaaaaaand...

... that's it. No skin texture needed .

[Waiting a little to check for little details I could enhance before I officially submit it to the contest. Suggestions are welcome.]

EDIT: I made a small enhancement and used a technique similar to `JurgenDoe's HDR tutorial.