Stick Around

More pre-Halloween fun. I hate to say it but this was a blast to make...

Good warm Sunday everyone.

Enlarge if you dare.

Caution Ghoulish Stuff:

This image I made from 9 layers. Again keeping things separate helps give greater control.

First I shot the knife stuck in a log surrounded by seed pods lit by a single softbox. I held the knife during timer exposure. I then removed the knife and shot my hand.

Then I removed my hand from it's background by using a mask. I then placed the hand, removed from its background into position with the knife. I added an additional mask to remove the back part of my hand so the knife looked like it was going through it. I copied the upper part of the knife and placed it into a new layer. This would allow me to paint a shadow to my hand from behind the knife.

I added an extra mask to the background image so I could paint out some of the black cloth that was showing up more than I wanted. I also added one of my neighbors jack-o-lanterns.

Now that I have everything in place it was time to paint in the blood. Pool it up in my palm and with a different kind of brush add guts to the knife blade below. I added a little bevel and emboss to the blood to give it some dimension. A little sharpness and you have some Sunday fun.

Note: No blood was spilled during the making of this blip. It was all carefully sucked up and put back in....