This is my first attempt an image manipulation in Photoshop. It went though many different phases, but the purpose was to practice digital art skills and be more comfortable using Photoshop.

I spent about three weeks on and off to complete this, and I still don't think it looks finished! I decided to leave it as is, otherwise it wouldn't see the light of day, because I’d keep thinking it would need more.

It was very much inspired by Cirque Du Soleil as I was obsessed with seeing their show (I saw Dralion a few days ago, w00t!)

I used three stock photos; one of the woman, the flamingo and the water lily. I used the 'watercolour reloaded' brushes from and 'drawn flourish' brushes from [link] / [link]

Initially she started off as an owl lady, became a swan princess and then finally flamingo princess. The only reason being the colour scheme I intended to use. I used pastel/light colours to produce a soft, elegant and feminine feel since she's supposed to be a princess.

The background was created by layering with the watercolour brush. I used the woman's head to create the princess and took a sample of the feathers around her head to flesh her out into a bust shape.

I was initially going to give her a tiara, but I scrapped that idea in favour of a waterlily crown, as I associated it with flamingos since they're water birds.

Overall I wanted to give the image a painterly feel so I applied some brush strokes and I also painted the make up on her face using my Wacom. (I heart you Wacom) I wanted to do this to break up the pink a bit more as I also did with the yellow behind her. It's still a fairly pink dominated image though.

Well that was a mouthful, anyhow I'm sure it looks quite amatuerish since it's my first go at this sort of thing, though I hope in time my skills will improve because I find this quite enjoyable.

Please leave any constructive criticism or comments!

The original image is about 2.4 MB in jpeg at 1680 x 1050 so I had to resize it heheh XD