Nice work! Good colors!

o-o;;;;; beautiful!

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It's gorgeous Sam, love the textures on the coat especially

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I guess I'm supposed to write stuff here.

Dooo deee dooo dee looooou~!

(that's a zelda sound effect)

Thanks Jen :3 PS7 is so much more versatile in terms of being able to fiddle with things like texture. Even the rendering just feels so much more natural. I'm in love <3

Your attention to detail is stunning, Sam. Any special tips on how to get textures or tricks you know? My PS renderings always look so... plain. I really love the pattern you've put on her coat especially, well done.

Thanks, Leah! I love this site: [link] - has plenty of free, hi-res textures available for download ^^ Rachel passed me the link a while back.

In terms of actually using them, first of all you need to get the texture into PS. You can open the file you downloaded, and I find it best to switch it to black and white in most cases, select the whole image or whichever part you need with the marquee tool, and then go to Edit > Define Pattern and give your new stamp a name. On your actual painting/drawing, you just need to make a new layer above whatever is going to be textured, preferably once you've got most of the shading and value details painted in, and set it to overlay (other layer modes might work, but personally I found overlay was the best). Then select the pattern stamp tool, the pattern you just made, and basically paint over the required areas ^^

You can adjust the opacity of that layer and then paint into it to make it more cohesive with your image. But it's literally really fast and easy to do XD I used textures that way on part of the staff and for the patterning on her dress.

You can also do the same but ‘define brush’ instead. Or just copy and paste the image onto yours, reduce the opacity and fiddle with the mode until it blends nicely (plus group layers above to alter the pattern’s colour) I find it easier to alter the dimensions of a pattern using edit -> free transform.

Omg, did any of that make sense except to me? O_o

Really excellent work, Sam. And even better for a first effort in PS7. I am so, so impressed. Just look at my eyes *________________*
Mesmerised 8D

Well, I understood it I are so smart!

S.M.A.T