Welcome to Gaia! ::

This has been buggin' me for days man...
You see, I entered in this competition a few weeks ago called Bird's Nest. It's an OC contest based on the best interpretation of the OC "Sharahs".

Here's my entry. [X]

I worked all weekend on it, and this was the result. I feel happy about how hard I tried on it. Especially since this is my 2nd art contest ( The 1st one being here. 3nodding )

Now here's the problem: My picture ended up bright. A little too bright. And I've been fickle about changing the skin tone because I believe this one fits the best. However, it doesn't fit very well in a white background. I could've worked more on the shadow tones, but...

Is there anything that I could have done to improve my entry?

@Moonflower: whoa that bright. i think what Quvi did is so much less hurtful to the eyes.

For this one, I used two programs~ (but it works the same in photo shop where you adjust the contrasts and brightness) I kind of played at it~ I changed the saturation to -20. Then, I got another layer and make it fully black. I also blurred the picture so the edges won't look too choppy. I clipped it to the picture and put it to overlay (with the opacity about 70%) Also, I finally added bit of glow to it (it's white by the way) while making it to about half the size:

I see how the multiplied layer works, but it exposes the distinct colors between the face and the arms. The arms & neck end up looking...umm, "rougher" compared to the appearance of the face. It just seems to bother me so much! scream
I guess my best option is to edit the skin tone once more. This time, if necessary, I will duplicate and multiply. Adding an abstract background also sounds useful. If I'm lucky, I'll get to replace my previous image. Thank-you, everyone. biggrin

Okay! I changed the skin tone completely. It should look darker now...