The Lady in Red

The idea for this artwork came to me a year or so ago while watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie marathon. I put the idea sketch into my “notebook of ideas” where it stayed for a while until I decided recently to bring it to life. It’s a little more violent than my usual style but the blood and splatter seemed like necessary details to tell the story I wanted to tell. There are a lot of little details in this artwork from the blood to the lipstick on the glass to the smoke from the freshly fired gun to her curious expression. Is she saying “what have I done?” to herself or “you don’t think little ole me did this, do you?” to the viewer? This was an interesting and, dare I say it, fun piece to create. I like doing different things from time to time to expand both my horizons and my comfort zone.

This scene crashed Poser a few times and was slightly more than my GPU could handle thanks to the femme fatale’s high-poly hair. I had to render the scene in two parts then combine the parts in postwork. As for the render, the scene was rendered in Superfly with just two point lights in the film noir style. In postwork, I did a lot of color isolation to bring out the reds and give it a slight monochromatic look and even more of a stark film noir look. I used both Photoshop actions, adjustment layers, and ON1 Effects to achieve the coloration effects. I also used Rons Blood effects to add blood splatter to the wall and to the man’s back then Rons Detail Smoke to add a small smoke plume to the gun. With the use of a free stock photo, I added a lipstick stain to the whiskey glass on the desk nearest the femme fatale. Finally, I added a slight film grain and thin border to finish the artwork. (Can I just point out how hilarious it is that I spent a few extra hours rendering this at high-resolution only to then add a film grain in postwork?!?)

• D9S Sadie by Dream 9 Studios
• Private Investigators Office by coflek-gnorg