Cătălina
Do you ever imagine what your favorite fiction character would look like in real life? I do sometimes, so I challenged myself to create a representation of a character derived from a literary work. I chose the poem “Luceafărul” written in 1883 by the great Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu.
The snippets below demonstrate the gradual transformation of the subject from an ordinary girl into a princess. The main accessory to support the royal look is obviously the crown, constructed piece by piece through lots of trial and error combining vector with raster assets. In addition, I have changed the color of the model's eyes, and slightly color-corrected her skin tones through basic retouching with techniques such as Dodge & Burn and painting with light.
In the end, the goal was to create an atmosphere of magic around the subject. Hence, I chose to merge the foreground with the background while maintaining an illusion of depth of field.
And in case you're wondering about Cătălina, she is the female lead character - a princess and her parent's only child. Her beauty is described in the first few verses of the poem that set the stage for an impossible love story between a human and a celestial being whose name is Luceafărul (aka Lucifer or The Morningstar). And even though there is absolutely nothing magical about Cătălina, as she is a mere human being, her infatuation with the fantastical creature is almost oddly mystical.
