I repeated the process for any areas of the figure that still needed attention. The last thing I needed to texturize was the shaft of the trident the figure is holding. Instead of assembling the shaft with segments of the cloud, I used an image of a jet stream. I imported the image of the jet stream into my document, just as I did with the other images (File > Import File).
Then I needed to place the jet stream along the path of the existing shaft. First, I desaturated the layer (Image > Desaturate). Then, I lowered the Brightness by -100 and raised the Contrast by 60 (Image > Brightness & Contrast). I set the layer’s blend mode to Screen, and then selected the Transformation Tool to rotate and resize the jet stream to follow the path of the shaft. Using the Eraser Tool (Size 40, Hardness 0, Alpha 40), I erased obstructing areas of the jet stream that overlapped the figure of Neptune.
There were still some areas where stone texture existed from the original statue layer. I selected the statue layer from the Layers Menu and selected the Liquify Tool set to 48 Size and the Pressure value of 3. I dragged the tool in small circular motions around the areas of prominent stone texture to soften and blur them.
Finally, I wanted to enhance the shadows of the figure a little more to add extra pop to the figure. I selected the Paintbrush Tool with black as my foreground color. I set the Alpha to 14, the Size to 16, and the Hardness to 0. I created a new layer above the statue layer and painted over areas of existing shadows under the eyebrows, around the mouth, and so on. Then I set this layer’s blend mode to Overlay from the Layers Menu, and my image was complete. Check out the final product on the top of this page, and then log on to Aviary.com and have fun!
