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Step 3. The third flame shapes were Dk Orange and Yellow Orange. I started to draw more flame-like shapes, at this point, as the lighter colours would be more noticeable. However, they still sat roughly on the darker shapes and overlapped in places. Now that the flames are building up to the last stages, you might want to move the transparency by shifting the centre transparency handle until you get a pattern you like the look of. If you find you have too many dark spaces, go back and fill them in with some of the darker coloured flames as necessary. These steps aren't definitive and I went back and forth a bit with different colours.

Step 4. The fourth flame shapes were Med Orange and Med Yellow. I was here following colours a bit more carefully as they were built up, again picking the lighter parts of the fire to make even lighter. I used quite a lot of these shapes and was also more careful drawing them. You may notice that shapes from this Step and Step 3. are more concentrated towards the bottom half to make the fire hotter here. As you can see, some of these shapes were long and narrow, drawn along the edges (colour edge definition again).

Also experiment with using smaller feathers with this colour, as the last effect is to get some of the flame edges sharper. I used some larger feathers as well, to soften the look in places. Feathers ranged from 2/3 pixels up to around 9 pixels. I noticed from the photo that there appeared to be arcs joining flames, so I drew a couple in using a feather of around 7 pixels. Although I lightened quite a bit of the picture, you can now begin to see more of a pattern emerging with areas left dark.

Step 5. The fifth flame shapes had a flat Med Yellow fill these were the final top highlights. Again play around with feather settings to accentuate or soften areas. I used various feathers from 4 - 10 pixels. You should only need to draw a few of these shapes. This was just tweaking what was already there. I added 2 flat filled and feathered ellipses (still in yellow) with the same fractal plasma transparencies to brighten larger areas and then sent them backwards to blend them in a bit more.

You might not get flame shapes happening as you want them to, so play around - go back if necessary and change shapes, feathers and move transparencies; or experiment with different colour combinations until you have something you like the look of.

I spent quite a while tweaking things afterwards. Such as also drawing a few coloured flames on top of lighter ones i.e. to add more contrast to any parts that were a bit too yellow or flat. I did tend to move some shapes backwards/forwards a bit to diffuse colours/bring them out and to get different patterns of colour emerging.

Now it is time to address those rectangles.

© Copyright 2002 Su Lawrence. All rights reserved.