"Sleeping Beauty" - this was a process.

I rarely go back to make major edits to my work, so this piece was a really interesting experience to make. My first finished product was this;

The text is a poem I wrote back in 2011 which my teacher originally encouraged me to do but then changed his mind about. As much as I like it this way, I could see where it could be made better, so I removed the crinkled paper texture and poetry layers and was left with this;

This is the original background of the first picture, a posterized church window. My teacher and I agreed that the posterizing was a bit much, so I remade the background

This is very, very close to the final image. On my own I realized her soft, smokey textures were almost too conflicted with the sharpness of the background. I upped the contrast and sharpness of her layer and created the final result;

This is the finished image. The added shadows and sharpness really tie the face to the background and make it believable. This piece also made me decide on what sort of theme to do for my final project.