First Post. This is a Water Phoenix that I created using paint.net at the start of the school year as part of my Graphic Arts Elective. Using a combination of gradients, curves, and various other adjustments, I created the blue fire that you see in the background. I found an open sourced phoenix online, removed the background using remove.bg and made my edits to it in order to give it the blue glow and shine in certain areas.
Here is how to create the fire effect seen in the background using paint.net:
- Set the Blending Mode to Overlay
- Go to the Effects menu, then Render, and select Clouds
- Change the Blending Mode to Difference
- Press CTRL+F to repeat the effect about a dozen times
- Select Flatten from the Image menu
- Select Curves from the Adjustments menu
- Select RGB under Transfer map
- Uncheck the Red and Green checkboxes
- Add a control point
- Repeat the steps for the green channel