Día de los Muertos – The Making Of The Sugar Skull Image 2.0

Posted by Julia Kuzmenko McKim in Dose of Inspiration, For Fellow-Photographers, Recent Projects

It’s been a while since I edited the first Sugar Skull artwork, and it ended up on the cover of the February issue of Artphotofeature magazine along with my interview inside. It’s also been picked up by an LA music producer for an upcoming hip-hop album (coming soon).

I’ve been busy with work, writing/recording for retouching ebooks lately, and waiting for the next wave of inspiration to edit the other Día de los Muertos look that we shot on the same day. A digital artwork like this takes many hours to complete, so you better be really inspired, otherwise it may end up among a pile of the abandoned projects that will never be completed.

I started this new picture a few days ago, and it took me approximately 5-6 hours over the span of a few nights to finish. To show the outline of my workflow I recorded a time lapse video of the making of this picture as well, and you can check it out below.

Photographed with Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 24-70mm L f/2.8,
Shutter Speed 1/200, Aperture f/6.3, Focal Length 70 mm, ISO Speed 200

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Mac, Wacom Intuos5 Touch (med), iMac 27”,
I used my RadLab Recipes for the final color grading.

Completion: 5-6 hours

Models: Kortnye Hurst, Sarah Stepanek
Base Makeup & Hair: Mikala Jean Vandenbroucke 
Photo & Post-production: Julia Kuzmenko | Visual Artist