April 07 Contest
April brings a Photo Art contest. Your challenge this month is to turn the provided photo into a Dutch Master style painting.

Download Image: The image has been saved at two different resolutions to help those that don’t want a long download.

LittleBlonde_med (http://www.retouchpro.com/contests/source_images/LittleBlonde_med.jpg ) - (medium resolution - ~1MB)

LittleBlonde_HR (http://www.retouchpro.com/contests/source_images/LittleBlonde_HR.jpg ) - (high resolution - ~4MB)

Photographer: gracey at morgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com/forum/profile.php?username=gracey)

Prize is a copy of Eye Candy Effects Collection, donated by Alien Skin (http://www.alienskin.com/ec-effects-collection.html):

The Eye Candy Effects Collection includes full, retail versions of Eye Candy 5: Textures, Nature, Impact, Xenofex 2, and Snap Art. Create amazing chrome, fire, smoke, lightning, clouds, comics and dozens of other effects. With 54 filters and over 1000 one-click settings, you'll blast through your creative projects. Purchased separately, these titles would cost $575.

Read reviews and check out examples on the web site. See for yourself why these plug-ins will be an essential part of your toolkit.

For some hints on this style check out this thread:
Dutch Golden Age painting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_masters)

More Examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age%2C_List_Of_People#Painting
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dutchmasters/resources/DM_ed_resource.pdf (excellent resource, but over 2MB)


THE RULES:

1. Contest will run from 1 Apr to 23 Apr 2007. Deadline for entries is 6pm EDST.

2. I will not answer questions concerning the rules. Interpretation of the rules is as important as execution.

3. Tasks:

* Turn the provided photo into a Dutch Master style painting.
* Final image must be exactly 450 pixels wide and 600 pixels high.
4. When you submit your entry put your username in the filename (ie: tpaul.jpg). This is so users can save the images to a local directory and remember who did what--important when it comes time to vote.

5. Post your entries to this thread. Links will not be accepted. Please restrict your comments, questions or discussion to the April 07 Contest Discussion thread. Inappropriately placed posts will be deleted.

6. Only one entry per person. You can change your entry up to the deadline.

7. Voting will run from 24 Apr to 30 Apr 2007. Only those with entries may vote.

8. Voting:
* Submit the 5 best entries (by artist name) in order, starting with your favorite.
* You cannot vote for your own image.
* Once you have voted, you cannot change your votes.


Finally, please remember that this is a friendly contest and suppose to be a learning experience. Tips and suggestions to help others are highly encouraged. Also please don’t limit your comments to just the top 5 when you vote. Most members are eager for feedback about their images, so remember to help each other out.

Here's mine (and Vermeer's).

Not happy with the size requirement. The original is squareish and the contest rules requre a rectangle, so now it looks El Greco to me... LOL

Here's my attempt...

Here's mine; it may change if I have some extra time to play.

Here's my try.

Here's my try :)

Here's mine.

Here is my version.

My take on it

Here's my version.

heres mine

fun attempt

This was fun and a good education in the Dutch Masters' styles.

Lorraine

I didn't plan on participating this month, but decided to try anyway.

Here is my interpretation.

April 07 PIC

You may have noticed that I completely changed how the sunlight is falling onto the girl's face. It is now soft semi-frontal light, instead of the original harsh side light. This new lighting angle give modeling to the face, which produces a three dimensional appearance. This soft face modeling is a more accurate lighting that the Dutch Golden Age Master employed in their paintings. Novice painters usually produce paintings without depth, very flat appearing paintings. Modeling is extremely importing in art and photography.

I was a professional photographer for over thirty years, this experience is extremely useful to me in producing graphic art.

The Dutch Golden Age painters brushed only minimal paint onto their canvas to create their images. They were marvelous at capturing realistic highlights and shadows.

A rehash from me

Super contest. Fun learning more about the Dutch masters, locating props, assembling composition and tweaking 'til satisfied.

An exercise in stretching and cloning. Did not want to replace the cloething or background, but wanted the style to be like that of an aged Dutch. Hopfully the result is to your liking. :)

The young girl in the painting is wearing authentic ventage Dutch girl attire.

This is an interesting web site with talented people. I enjoy viewing your work.

My rendition of the little Dutch girl .

I`m not Dutch Master, but this is my attempt :happy:

Had to have a go at this, though maybe should have taken finger out of dyke before starting........

Here's my entry.

I'm not a Dutch Master, but I play one on TV.

Here is mine.

Research for this was exhaustive. I found styles upon styles and finally settled for copying from Vermeer's style with a touch of Rembrandt thrown in.

Here is mine.

I wanted to try painting too...

And here's my attempt.

Peter

here's my entry, gosh there is just so much to learn from the old masters!

Here's my entry
and this is my first contest

This contest is now closed.

Congratulations go to LonK!

Top 5
1. LonK - 52
2. TPaul - 33
3. Lorraine - 30
4. dkcoats - 17
5. NorthernShadow - 16