Pawn of the Neví Cover Art, part 5 - Viking Visual Art Tutorial

Last time. I took you through some of the battle I had with the lighting and rendering or my cover image.
This time, I will show you how I finished my work, starting with:

I decided that the surrounding picture needed to be that of the Ilim City Kite Festival.

With Gimp, I opened the balcony scene first.
Then, I opened up (as layers) two CC0 images of kites and positioned them.

Unfortunately, the two images didn't match in their background and when I looked into changing the lighter background to match, it would have taken way too much work to make it work-ish. So, instead, I used the erase tool at 50% opacity to blend the two layers together a bit.

This is when I took the image over to Photoscape.

I cropped the image to 6x9 dimensions first of all. But to get all of my balcony scene into the crop, it affected the top of my image as I'd made it in Gimp. So, I used the clone tool to take out the half-kites, then to blend the top bit together. Cloned, then blurred so that it looks like one solid background again.

I played with blending the balcony scene into the background images when I was on Gimp, but I didn't like the result, so I went back to keeping the balcony scene as it was.

Finally, I added my text and margins - again, all on Photoscape. The bubbles have to be made first with about 50% opacity so that the text is easy to see against the background. The text is added next. I get the text positioned and sized, then double-check the bubble and resize it to match the text. I find Photoscape very simple to use after you get used to it. It's free too, so there's little reason to not try it!

Here is my final.

What do you think?

CC0 images from: NeedPix and PxHere

All work done by myself on: Photoscape, Gimp, Krita, and/or Daz 3D Studio
Cross-posted on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu
Other parts of this tutorial: part 1, part 2 - correcting clothing and poses, part 3 - building the set, part 4 - lighting and rendering

Past tutorials:

Map Development for Alacantis (on GIMP), part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover image for Acting the Part
Cover image for Brighid's Blood (part of the update).
Cover image for Birth of the Neví, part 1, part 2
Map Development for Velantia, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Map Development for Kranisis, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover Image for Name of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6
Beginning with Daz 3D Studio - my cover image for Mind of the Neví: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, changes
Cover image for Game of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3
Cover image for Pawn of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
blogging on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu

Pawn of the Neví Cover Art, part 5 - Viking Visual Art Tutorial

Past tutorials:

Photo salvages:

Coloring Tutorials & Mini-tutorials:

Halloween Artwork:

Miscellaneous Artwork: