Inspired by yet another beautiful poem by our dear friend Blush. I have used an excerpt from the poem, DESERT SUNSET. Thank you, Susan for inviting me to look at these beautifully written verses. We stand in the cool shade of tangerine clay cliffs; the streaming lavender advances as we watch with star-kissed eyes, blanketed in silken colors~ The caramel sun sets, yet it remains with us in ceased calico rhymes; sparks glitter within our vision,we are the shadows of light~ ~Blushfulmoon, AllPoetry.com A quick tutorial: I always like windblown hair, here I used one of Ilona's instant hair, and mixed it with some of her men's hair. Mixing and matching is fun! After fitting it right to the character's head (yep, I render bald girls most of the time), using transform/scale/rotate, etc. and to have more control, I use filter/liquify to get the right flow and hair movement that I like. I changed the hair color to fiery red with hue/sat/colorize in Photoshop, then to add depth to the hair, and to accentuate the shadows, I used the burn tool and some fine hair brushes, picking some areas that are under the highlighted areas. For the highlights, I added another layer and picked a small tip brush, then added those light-colored wispy strands (opacity 30-35). With a layer mask, I erased the tips of these strands lightly to blend them with the actual hair. Then I used hue/sat again to change the colors of these strands and pick the right tone that will match the hair. I added the background that was previously rendered, blur it a bit to create DOF. Between the background layer and the character layer (this time, I have grouped the girl and the hair together and made a duplicate of this group, and merged them), I added a gradient layer (just black and white), blend mode- multiply. On this layer, another layer mask was added and with the use of a bigger, soft brush (low opacity), I erased the areas where I want it to be lighter. In this case, it was the mountains in the background as that's where the lighted areas are. You can also reduce the opacity of this gradient layer, between 30-40 is fine. What's good about this gradient layer, it helps set the mood and atmosphere of the scene. Thank you for taking a peek at my work and for the comments. Wishing you all a great new week! The tattooed girl is Rianne, now available at RMP. PREVIOUS: The Muses: Rianne