CD cover process

This is the process I used to make a CD cover for my cousin Bret Slack. He's been working on a jazz music album and wanted me to create the art work for it.

I started with a rough sketch of the gesture in painter. This was only after I sketched some ideas in my sketch book to get the idea right.

Then, on a new layer I quickly drew in the environment and the phonograph. I used some basic photo references for the phonograph and the skeleton to get the details right.

Then, I used another layer to fill the whole picture to appear much darker. And I experimented with the glow brush to see what the lighting should look like. The direction was sort of a night club in the 1920's.

I wasn't really digging the glow brush idea. So, I desaturated everything and put most of the values in. And I rendered out a lot of the skeleton and background.

Then, I finished up with putting the color back in, but not as saturated. I also put in smoke effects and the feather in the fedora. Then, I applied some texture to give a used effect to everything.

Because of school and other projects this CD cover took way longer than I expected. Also, while doing this project my painter application somehow reset itself, and I lost all of my custom settings and brushes!!! Which was kind of frustrating! So, remember to always back up everything!

On a side note: After I remade all of my brushes and set all of my custom palettes, this started showing up after opening files:

I hate this... whatever this is!!!!!!! After I click on any painter or photoshop file this shows up. So, I click on OK. And the loading-into-memory sign comes up for about a second and then this same warning comes up. And it just goes in this cycle until I finally just force quite the application! If anybody knows what this is, I would love to know so I can turn it off!!!!