Portrait Stories
Portrait Stories is an ongoing series where I share my conceptual portraits, the sparks that inspired them, behind-the-scenes chaos, and the lessons each image taught me. It's a blend of photography and storytelling - an honest look at the making of art.
Table of contents
- Portrait Stories
A Desire To Learn To Build My Own Worlds: Mushroom World
A Fantasy Portrait Inspired By A Young Teenager's Love of Mushrooms
The Teenager's Obsession
In 2021, I was doing a 365-day photography project, and my then 13-year-old became obsessed with mushrooms. She was also a ready and willing victim for my photography adventures. I wanted to create a little mushroom world for her. I was new to compositing, but I couldn’t find existing free stock images that fit what I was looking for. And you know what they say, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” So, I learned how to use the 3D Software Blender to build what I needed.
Further Creative Pursuit
After completing the project, I went on to get my Cinema4D CGI for Photographers Certificate. I loved working in Cinema4D, but found the program to be much too expensive for what I was doing. I may one day go back to it, but Blender is a great program, and it is free. Let me know if you’d like to see some of what I made there.
The Making Of: Compositing a Fantasy Portrait With Blender and Photoshop
Modelling The Mushroom World in Blender
I first had to “model” the world I wanted. In the video below, you can see the mountains, the mushrooms, and placeholder rectangles where I later applied images I photographed. The hardest part of this was modelling the mushrooms because I had to sculpt them. I am happy with how they turned out, but I hope to learn to sculpt better in the future.
Painting The Mushroom
Once I had built the structure, I had to “paint” or “apply textures” to my creations. For different things, this was applied in various ways. I began by painting the mushroom. This looks funny right now, but the image gets wrapped around the mushroom top to cover the entire thing.
You can see how the paint is applied to the mushroom cap here:
Sourcing Textures and Images for the Final Image
After that, I sourced textures from Textures.com and Poly Haven to apply to my little mushroom and collected the images that I planned to use for my girl, my dragon, and the background.
Applying The Textures and Images in Blender
In the image below, you can see what the Blender workspace looks like for applying textures to the mountains. It seems very confusing at first, but once you learn the rules, it isn’t so bad. It’s been a few years since I built this piece, and revisiting it reminded me how much technical skill fades if you don’t use it.
In the video below, you can see how the world looks with the textures applied before I rendered it out.
Taking It To Photoshop To Refine
Now, you might assume I was finished at this point. Not so! I had to render out the layers and bring them into Photoshop to do the editing for the final image. These are a few of the images I exported from Blender:
Finally, we have a video of the editing layers in Photoshop. I didn't apply too much. You will notice that the very last change seems like a big jump. For this last layer, I applied a Photoshop Action from OnlyTheCurious (Formerly The Color Lab). The action I used is no longer one they offer. It was The Castle Stones action from The Artisan Collection by Joel Robison. If you are looking for ways to make dramatic colour tweaks, it's worth checking them out. There are a couple of actions that I still use occasionally.
What I Learned: A Successful Fantasy Portrait
Clearly, I don’t do things the easy way. I like to dive right into the deep end and figure things out as I go. Was it worth it? All learning experiences are worth the effort. This is still among my TOP 3 favourites, so I would say it was “Absolutely worth it!” I even have it framed and on my dining room wall.
Being able to draw, paint, or sculpt the assets that I would like to use, like dragons, is a big reason for my return to University to study Studio Art. I have this insane need to be able to “do it all” myself. I want every part of an image to be something I created. Then I don’t have to outsource somewhat imperfect images like the dragon that I used.
Realism, or believability, is another thing I strive for. When you look at my work, I want you to be immersed in the story I'm telling and not be pulled away by graphics that look a little off.
I submitted this image to a couple of competitions. For one, it was a submission to participate in a series of weekly creative competitions. They provided feedback on all the photos I had submitted. For this one, they indicated that my smaller mushroom needed to be more in focus. Another critique of this image is the wrinkles in the dress. That is an issue for many a critic, but I personally love the “realness” of it. What teenage explorer has perfect clothing?
I had also submitted this image to an Instagram competition (they are no longer active) and won an album from nPhoto Lab, which you can see below. It came in a beautiful box with the image on the front. I am so grateful to have this collection of my early work, back when I was McDermott Images. Seeing your work in print is an absolute must.
Final Thoughts
I know this one was a lot to take in! Did you enjoy it? Did you learn something? Please share your thoughts. I want this to be a conversation between us, so it’s important to me to understand what parts of these portrait stories you value. Is there something else you would like to know? Something else I can share? Drop a comment and let me know.
Have you worked in Blender or another 3D program? I’d love to see what you created. Drop a link to it in the comments or tag @theportraitwitch in your Instagram or Facebook posts for it.
Revisiting this image was a wonderful experience for me and inspires me to go back and relearn Blender. What other worlds can I build? What worlds would you like to see? It also reminded me how much fun it is to have an idea that I want to bring to life. One of my biggest struggles as a creative is having ideas but not being sure how to make them real. I try. Often, I fail, but sometimes, like Mushroom World, they become an epic part of my collection.
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