When I pulled this Royo off the sci-fi and fantasy binaries group, I just knew I had to use it for a Scully picture. The fact the subject was a red head formed part of the reason; the other came from the fact she was tattooed, as was Scully for an episode. So I imagined that this is a version of Scully who decided that she wanted tattoos that were rather more interesting than the rather traditional one she got and had removed in the episode. I had wanted to name the image after the tattoo episode, but it had rather disappointingly been named 'Never Again', so I came up with 'Black Art' instead. The title comes from the fact the tattooes are black, and plays on the X-Filey aspect of things occult.

The trickiest aspect was matching skin tones, as I had to substantially tinker with both the base image and head shot, altering not only tonal balances and hues, but saturation levels as well. Conversely, covering over the myriad of studs that the subject had been decorated with around her throat and navel was simplicity itself thanks to the rubber stamp tool, though I did have to darken the tattooes themselves. As with any image where I need thiongs over the face, such as hair or the tattoo beneath the eye, they were copied off the base and placed on higher layers. The areola had originally been covered by a metallic disk, surrounded by studs and from which a chain or some such depended. All that was removed, the disk copied over itself then recoloured and resized to give the appearance of an ordinary areola and nipple. Last of all I removed the title from over the image on the wall, and flipped the picture out of a sense of aesthetics.

Not surprisingly given the above ramble, this picture contains nudity.