STEP BY STEP FLOURISH FACES
Create a surreal portrait effect in Affinity Photo and learn key editing skills
01 PAINT BLACK AROUND EDGES
Open the portrait and duplicate the layer twice with Cmd/ctrl+j. Name the top layer ‘face’. Grab the brush tool, set colour to black and paint over areas you don’t want to be visible, like the edges of the hair in our case. Highlight the middle layer, go to Edit>fill and fill with black. Next, open the supplied flourish.png file.
02 COPY IN A FLOURISH
Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and drag a selection over one of the flourishes, then copy (Cmd/ Ctrl+v). Go to the portrait and paste (Cmd/ctrl+v). In the Layers panel drag the flourish layer onto the thumbnail of the top portrait layer to make a mask. Click on it and, with the Move tool, drag it into place.
03 ADD A SHADOW
Duplicate the face layer with Cmd/ctrl+j, then click the mask and hit delete. Copy in another flourish shape, then drag it onto the duplicate. Click the fx icon in the Layers panel and check Outer Shadow. Increase Radius and Offset as shown to add a shadow, so that it looks like the flourishes appear as if they intertwine.
04 BUILD IT UP
Copy the face again with Cmd/ctrl+j, then as before delete the existing mask, then copy in and mask another flourish. Continue in this way to build up the effect. You can duplicate and reuse flourishes in different positions around the face, or resize and rotate them to add variety to the effect.
05 CHANGE THE COLOURS
We can add more variety by shifting the colours of flourishes. Highlight a layer, click the Adjustments icon in the Layers Panel and choose HSL. Drag the adjustment layer on top of the face thumbnail, then use the Hue and Saturation controls to tweak the colours. Add more colour shifts to other layers.
06 FINISH IT OFF
You might want a few of the flourishes to extend beyond the edges of the face to create more of a flowing shape. To do this, highlight the layer, grab the Brush tool and sample a colour from the skin, then paint over the edges of the flourish to reveal more. Continue to build up the effect until you’re happy.