Silver Leaf Portraits

All of the images in this post were taken by Grace Grindley, one of my A Level Students- who is currently studying and preparing for her A2 Exam. She is experimenting with materials similar to the artists she has researched and has used silver leaf to create a textured surface on the models face before photographing the set (Hollie Chisholm- thanks for your help)

The function of this post is to show other students what can be done in a couple of hours if you milk Photoshop for all you can get and have an idea in mind for what you want to achieve. The images below were developed focusing on cropping, juxtaposing and combining images in different ways using layering in Photoshop.

Some of the layers have had textures of the lace netting (borrowed from other images in the set) as well as bokeh images and stock images of sparkles and glass to further emphasise the silver leaf.

All of the images in this post start off by having the canvas extended (like in the image above) to create more space and interest in the main focal point. The images space is then filled with stretched / pasted /merged layers before they are further developed with colour adjustment layers and other layers of images

The series of images above have had a cold green colour adjustment layer added on a color burn layer mode

Below is an example of a slide that I would show to students as a means to encourage ways of developing and initiate discussion about work.

The image below shows examples of artists/ photographers that I would show to students who are going to experiment with cropping, juxtaposing and combining images.

determining what image works the best is made much easier if you can spend the time at the start of developing images by pasting variations of layer moded, colour changed layers etc in one overall image- so you can then apply numerous actions / curves / adjusments to many images at once- it also helps you to compare all versions of images together in one go.