This graphic started as a sculpture by Clyde Oishi. Being an artist and keeping a professional portfolio, he needed a photograph the Zebra to have major retouch work. His sculptures are formed by sculpting and bonding wire with meticulous detail. Many of his works are pretty big. The original Zebra sculpture here is about 1-1/2 to 2 feet from ear to tail. This allows him to get extreme detail with his animate renditions and surrealistic sculptures.

Click to visit The Art of Clyde Oishi home page.

The background had no real texture, too much lighting and an unnatural shadow-cast. After looking at the photo, I ascertained the best approach to this project. After scanning the image, I dropped it into Photoshop 2.5 and ColorIt! 2.0. With a bit of patience, filters and lots of feathering, the final image was produced. Below left is the original photo. The image on the right was provided to help with the bleed-thru areas for reference.

Here's a rundown of what was done to the image:

• Background changed to blue linear gradient
• Removal of original unwanted shadowing
• Bleed-thru of background through sculptured holes on Zebra
• Removal of unwanted pixel artifacts
• Addition of ground shadow