The print originally scored a 91, but one of the judges challenged it. I had a fill light in the back of the room and a reflector on the other side to throw just a soft light on her back I didn’t want a strong light,” explains Willis. “I had a strip of light on the right-hand side, the direction she’s facing, up against the wall angled toward her to get that rim lighting. Beyond the overall composition and Willis’ masterly painting, the judges were drawn to the rim lighting. The image scored a perfect 100 at the recent Southwest PPA District competition and won a Sunset Print Award. She had bent her leg where the bottom of the foot was showing and I didn’t like that,” explains Willis. The flowers and the basket were not in the image I composited them in. After I shot it I edited in Photoshop and took it into Corel Painter and painted it. It was shot in my studio with a canvas backdrop. “She posed and let me take that picture for competition. She gave the client and any friends who also wanted a boudoir session a special rate if they agreed to pose for photos she could use at competition. Kelly Willis, owner of Modello Fine Portraits in Deer Park, Texas, made a deal with one her best clients who wanted a boudoir photo session. Reverie by Kelly Willis, Modello Fine Portraits. “I laid the before images on top of the top mat, backed everything up, photographed it, and sent the file in digitally just in time for the deadline.” “Presentation is very important, especially in the Master Artist category, because they want to see the before images, and sometimes it’s hard to get them on there without being distracting,” says Gibson.
Gibson floated the mats a bit, added a bevel to the outer mat and colored the bevel with a burnt-orange pencil. Though Gibson says she normally uses Sunset inkjet paper for her competition prints, she used Hahnemuhle Torchon for this image because she thought the texture of the paper complemented the image.
Gibson framed the final print with two layers of plain white mat.
I did some cloning with different brushes, did a lot of dodging and burning, and always take it into Photoshop and apply other filters and layers as well.” I took that into Photoshop and put a motion filter on it – zoom, I think – so that it gives it that center pow look. “For the background I went in and grabbed some colors from the roosters, drew some oval squiggles and overlaid them over each other. I like to add colors with pencil on the print, but I didn’t have time for that,” says Gibson. Then I took it into Corel Painter and painted in multiple layers. “I composited different parts of the roosters together and positioned them in Photoshop. Gibson bought stock rooster illustrations (the four images at the bottom of the panel) as the basis for the image she had in mind and went to work with Photoshop and Painter.
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I know I’m from Texas, but… I’ve been obsessed with roosters and chickens lately because I like trying to figure out how to paint all the different feather textures.” “I usually shoot my own photography for that category, but I don’t have any roosters in my backyard here in Fort Worth. “For the Master Artist competition category at the Southwest PPA you don’t have to take the photo yourself you just need to show how you put the elements together,” explains Gibson. This time around Gibson had an idea featuring fighting roosters, but didn’t have any roosters nearby to photograph. Last year’s winner, Little Miss Muffet, combined Gibson’s portrait photography with digital paint. Photog., won a Sunset Print Award for her artistic flair and masterful use of Photoshop and Corel Painter. For the second year in a row, Tracye Gibson, M.