Digital layering and composition

I wanted to experiment with different emotions and psychological feelings, I thought these would work well with layering images, dealing with issues such as; split personality, facades and some mental illness's. These would then be used to decide how my painting would be portrayed and provide the source imagery for the pieces.

I started by using photoshop to blend the photographs I had taken in my second lot of studio photographs. To do this, I first placed one of the photographs onto a blank background (layer 1) I then pasted my second image over the top of this (layer 2). I chose images that I felt would flow into the previous photograph and would work well together. Due to the photographs being very opaque I couldn't see the photograph beneath it, to resolve this I then changed the opacity on the image above to allow the image below to peer through. Once I had done this I then moved the images into different compositions to experiment with different images for the piece.

These images could then be converted into my colour schemes and used for reference in my own surreal coloured paintings in the style of Jen Mann.