The title 'Hand Made Nude' is actually a reference to the hand-made paper look of this image. The background of the image was created by taking a photograph of a crumpled piece of hand-made paper, illuminated with a yellowish studio light, from a hard angle to simulate the setting sun. That file was then filtered with the Adobe Gallery Effects Dry Brush filter.
The model was photographed in the studio from a ceiling to floor perspective. She was posed on a black backdrop so as to easily isolate her form later, in the digital file. A gray-scale version of her, was then pasted into a mask (alpha) channel in the master file of the background. A second mask channel was created with an inverted gray scale image of the model. The two masks are used, in turn, to pull some of the image values darker and some lighter, until a subtle image of the model's form emerges from the background. Further enhancements include a drop-shadow and drop-highlight around the model's form. These enhance the depth of the image, making the model seem to rise up out of the background. It is important to note that no pixels from the image of the model actually show up in the final image. Her image was only used to affect tonal changes in the image of the paper background.
James G. Brey
[View Artist's Statement]
