Paint Party Friday--Change

I haven't had too much studio time since last weekend, but i am always sitting in front of a computer--my "painting" for the party is digitally rendered from a photo i took with my phone last summer :) I will try to give a bit of instruction on how I got from photo to finished painting. Keep in mind, I don't know what I'm doing....lol...just went with something that gave me the look i liked! and i didn't write down the specifics as i went, so this will be a very GENERAL tutorial--lol---i'll pay more attention next time ;)


This is the photo i started with: i opened it in PSE (photoshop elements--i'm using 6.0)--as a safeguard, it is a good practice when you open a photo/background/etc to alter to go to "File:duplicate" to make a copy and then close out the original. Once i have my copy, I select the "background" layer in the layers pallet, right click on it and chose "layer from background." If you don't do this, your background is locked and you can only make certain changes to it.

I started by trying to add artistic filters directly to the photo and wasn't liking it at all. 

• I decided to duplicate the layer and turn it to black and white. 
• I applied the "paint daub filter" to the black/white layer--adjusting all the paint daub options until i thought it looked like watercolor. At this point, i had two layers--the color photograph and the b/w with the filter.
• Selecting the b/w layer, i changed the blending mode to "hard light"--way cool, but i wanted more...
• I duplicated the b/w layer (3 layers now) and changed the blending mode to "luminocity"--sweet.
• I did a "merge visible" to get back to one layer and increased the saturation some. 

So this is where we are: (oh--forgot about the mask i used to get that extra bit of color around the edges--i'll save that for another time)

• I decided the lower right of the "painting" needed some text, so I added a .png file from Club Scrap's Papillion digi scrapbook kit.
• i changed the color of the text to match the blue in the grunge border and then added a "simple bevel" and "low drop shadow" (adding a drop shadow is the key to making any object in your digi art look "3-d")
• merge visible again

If i stopped here, they would be lovely printed up as note cards...but I wanted still more...

• I opened and duplicated a background "paper" from Club Scrap's Raku kit--then drag-and-dropped the painting. I resized and centered it, making it above center just a bit.
• Use the eye dropper color select tool to select a nice shade out of the flower.
• Select the painting--go to "Edit-->Stroke". Make sure the yellow foreground color is chosen, and change the outline width to 30 pixels (more or less to your liking). This put a yellow border around the painting.
• add a simple bevel and drop shadow to the painting layer and voila!!

Whew! that took me a while...lol...for more detailed info on the techniques I used, check out this site--the tutorials are fantastic!


Happy Arting to all and stay tuned for my very first blog give-away!!