FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE?
See below for "Information and Guidelines."

Here’s another “mini-challenge” to play with in the Photo-based Art category until the next offical challenge is posted here (http://www.retouchpro.com/challenge/index.html).

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PHOTO ART: Mini-Challenge #32 - Bambi

This one caught my eye. (OK... How about a collective "Ohhhhh....") I'm sure you'll do some wonderful things with it.

Good luck and have fun.

~DannyR~

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INFORMATION AND GUIDELINES

Unlike “official challenges” for this forum which can be found here (http://www.retouchpro.com/challenge/index.html), this one will be self-contained within this thread. It is intended as an opportunity to engage in this artform until the next official challenge is posted.

The rules are more-or-less the same:
* It’s a challenge, not a contest -- intended to provide opportunities to experiment, share methods and/or techniques and, most importantly, have FUN.
* Everyone who participates is a winner.
* There’s no expiration date.

GUIDELINES:
1. Use any method, application(s), style(s) you like:
. * Convert to sketch, grayscale, abstract, watercolor, oil painting, pen-and-ink, Conte crayon, impasto, van Gogh or any style of your choosing
. * Add elements from other images (collage) or replace the background
. * Hand painting? Tracing? Freehand? You bet. Always appreciate entries of this nature.
. * Apply filters from your favorite application(s) or tweak it with 3rd party plug-ins
. * Feeling animated? Not Godzilla again, plu-eeze!
. * Any or all of the above

Bottom line:
How you create this masterpiece makes no difference. Whatever floats your boat as long as you follow guideline #4 in the process.

2. When done, reply to this thread and attach your work (don’t forget the 100kb size limit).

Note: Multiple entries OK if you’re so inspired.

3. By all means include some verbiage on how you achieved your masterpiece so others will benefit from your skills and experience. Make it as descriptive as you like. Grammar and spelling will not be graded. Priority given to content, not how it is written.

4. Have fun.

Animals are good subjects for oil. So here an oil rendition of "Bambi"

First I erased most of the background which left a white background. Then I did an IMage>AdjustmentsInvert which gave me a black background.

Using Art history brush and History brush tool I put the colors back. I used big brush size on the background. Using a graphics tablet let me vary the brush dynamics.

On the deer itself, I used smaller brush with blending option set to darken or multiply. This saturated the colors on the deer.

Duplicate layer. Instead of USM I used Filter>Stylize>Emboss. About 86%, height - 6, angle - - 79 degrees to correspond to the light falling on the deer. Adjust opacity Flatten.

Tony

Tony, very nice! The lighting is lovely also.


I used a combo of a dry brush layer and a postered edges layer plus the addition of Bambi's best buddy, Thumper. This Thumper is a jackrabbit, but Bambi doesn't care.

CJ & Tony:

Both of these are great. You're warming up my heart already! :)

CJ,
The addition of Thumper is inspired. It looks like it is really part of the picture.
I also like that you reframed to keep the image in balance.

Tony

Tony and CJ, you both created beautiful pictures here.

Thanks, Tony, for the details on how you do your oils look. I tried it and think I could get the hang of that! CJ, that picture needed something in the empty space, and you found the perfect solution!

Phyllis

I gave Bambi a change of scene then applied Paint Engine -Bad Brush to the background and Paint Engine - Arctic to Bambi which I applied with the Pattern Brush set to darken. Folowed that by using Danny's texturizing technique (Find Edges -Emboss - Hard Light).

Jim

Jim, your little Bambi in the shade of that tall forest is so wonderful I can't think of a good enough adjective...

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious maybe?

This goes in my keeper file as one of the best images I've seen on retouchpro to date.

Phyllis

Jim - I really LOVE your image! Wow! :)

Can someone please tell me what kind of Bambi is in this picture? It's certainly not a mule deer which I have seen plenty of. And I don't think it's a white-tailed deer. Is it a deer at all, or a larger hoofed animal? This is really bothering me. :(

Thanks, Jeanie

Phyllis, Jeanie,

Gosh, thanks for the very kind words. I'm speechless.:spchless: :)

Oh Jim! This is simply beautiful.

Nuff said.

~Danny~

Wanna hear (and see) something really weird?

I was starting to work on Bambi and copied the magenta channel then blurred a dupe of it, and by mistake blended it over the original (layers out of order) and set it to hue mode. A verrrry odd thing happened--swirly interference lines appeared all over the background! I noticed then that the channel was NOT in b/w, but actually had a slight touch of color to it. It was this tiny bit of color that made those lines, since they disappeared when I did desaturate the layer. Stranger yet, it ONLY did it on the 'hue' setting. It was too weird not to use, even though the resulting picture makes Bambi look more like he's IN a butterfly instead of surrounded by them! :)

I will have to see if I can find another pic that will duplicate this effect...could just be the way that particular background had been previously worked.

Phyllis

Phyllis,
That's a cool effect. It looks like those mouth blown glass scuptures.

Tony

I applied a levels adjustment then the cutout filter. Over that I put a layer of green noise (used KPT "special green noise" but there are other ways to get the same result) and faded the effect. Then applied anisotropic diffuse (I love what it does to noise!) a few times (turning canvas between each) interspersed with sharpening.

Phyllisotropic :)

I thought Bambi looked a little lonely too, but wasn't clever enough to think of Thumper. Very nice CJ:)
I used a layer mask to separate Bambi from his original bk/grnd. Smart blur, drybrush, adjusting opacity, and blend modes. Image adjustment, invert, color dodge, gaussian blur. Several layer masks. Taking each mask off with wet media brushes, adjusting the opacity. Selected the butterflies from an earlier challenge, duplicated them. Cute challenge. I had several little Bambi's as pets growing up in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Something happened to their mothers, I remember feeding them with a baby bottle:) The Bucks did get mean when they reached a certain age, probably the adolescent stage;)

Wanda

Another one. I don't know why, but I love sketches:)

Wanda

Bambi

Night In The Forrest … It took some time for me to place the Faun, I don’t ever remember seeing a Faun in daylight without cover.

Duplicate … select Deer … Filter > Pallet Knife, stroke size - 4, stroke detail - 2 and softness -5. Filter > Poster Edges, Edge Thickness - 2, Edge Intensity - 1 and Posterization - 2.

Flatten … select All … Edit > Fill > Foreground (Black) … adjust opacity.

Flatten.

Don

Don, the eyes are a clever touch...looks like he got caught in your headlights...or at least your flashlight.

You are right about seeing lone fawns, with one exception. A lot of farmers and country folk end up adopting those whose parents get killed. The orphan fawns often wander into the fields and pasture without mom to tell them not to. Like Wanda, I've seen my share of these adorable little guys. We bottle fed a very young one when I was a little girl and he survived and went back to the forest. Hopefully not to get shot that winter!

Anyone ever find out what kind of deer this is?

Phyllis

Thanks Phyllis

I wasn't sure how many people would understand the effect of the lights in the eyes ...

Don

Here is my try. Pencil sketch. After making color version, inspected channels and chose red channel for pencil sketch look.. Added apple and grass then noise.

Jerry :D

Jerry, that's just lovely. The apple is a wonderful touch! Nice softness to the sketch, and you got rid of that messy background too...good idea.

Phyllis

Jerry, I REALLY like your sketch:) I love how you put the grass in, and the apple is a perfect touch. Really nice!! Jeez, I'm not going to do any more sketches:)

Wanda

Phyllis and Wanda
Thanks for the nice comments. It is really nice to get them from talented folks like you lady's.

Wanda please don't stop doing sketches. Without your guidance on the rose picture, I would not have known a good way to do sketches. The techniques that you shared are what I am using as a base for the art projects that I am trying. Thanks again for the help..

Right now I am trying to restore the new soldier challenge..Most of my hair is pulled out (jak's entry is unreal)..

Jerry :D

Hi. I'm new here and thought I'd give Photo Art a try. I'm not sure what else to say, so I guess I'll just see if I can get this picture to post.

Andrew, welcome!

Your rendition of the fawn is wonderful! I love the colors...very striking. And your background is very imaginative and effective.

What program did you use to paint with?

Phyllis

Andrew B. -- lovely work! Glad you found us, and hope you submit more of your images. :)

Hi Phyllis and CJ. Thank you for the encouraging words!

Phyllis, you asked me which paint program I used. I did most of this in Photoshop. I did one step in an old copy Photo-Paint because it has a filter I wanted to use on the background. But I did use two paint filters within those programs. I also sat down tonight and figured out how to explain how I did this:

Extracted Bambi from background

Background: Applied Alchemy filter (in Photo-Paint) with "autumn" setting. Pulled into Photoshop and set this to Overlay above original background. Lightened the lower part using a gradient mask in a levels adjustment layer.

Bambi: I did too much fiddling with this, but what it boils down to is two extracted copies of Bambi. On the first, I applied large amounts of jpeg cleanup and grain reduction to simplify the image. On a second, I used Color Balance to pull blue and cyan almost completely over to yellow and red (to give Bambi a warm feel). Set the second copy over the the first one with blending set to Color and opacity at 82%. What this did is project the color detail from the color-adjusted version onto the smoother luminosity of the simplified version. Then, I took an averaged sample from the background layer I had already created, and put this on a layer above the two Bambi layers, set to multiply, 27% opacity. This was to get Bambi to share some color tone with the background.

Both: Merged background and Bambi. Applied Paint Engine Soft Paint but with amount lowered to 0.48. Then removed paint engine effect from eyes, forehead and nose. Put new layer of pure magenta on top with opacity at 5%. This was to counter the greens slightly. Cropped, flattened, and unsharp mask set to 60,1,0.

Along the way, I did hand touch-up using clone tool and eraser. And I put a slight blur on some transition areas.

Anyway, this was quite an experience. The background was easy, but Bambi felt like one step forward, one step back -- until I hit on this. I think I'll take a rest before trying another one. <g>

Andrew

Andrew:

A belated welcome from me, too!

Wonderful work on Bambi! This is a great addition to this thread. Appreciate the info on your methods, too.

In the future I hope we see more of your creations in some of the other mini-challenges.

~DannyR~

Chuck,
Thanks for an educated guess on the type of deer. It's definitely NOT a mule deer, as I watch the mule deer fawns playing in my backyard all summer and they look nothing like this picture.
Jeanie

Wow - even the vegetation looks similar! :)

Here's a newborn mule deer fawn (still damp from birth) that I discovered in my backyard bleating for it's mother who was not visible to me (and I really looked hard)!

Jeanie

Browsing through the older images, that's okay isn't it?

Caught in the headlights.

Decided to do an oil while I was up. Sorry about the artifacts, but I had to go to 26% compression to keep it under 100K (with cheap storage, RetouchPro hopfully will up the size one day, say to 200K). For those who don't mind the wait, or on High Speed, this (http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/6287/minichallenge32bambi6hw.jpg) is what I originally intended (hosted by ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.us/)). :)

Not quite sure what I did to get this painted affect

I used Studio Artist on this one.

Cathy :happy:

Applied a little of this 'n that, painted out a little, left a little. Sometimes you don't get inspired. Guess it shows here.

Steve

An impressionist plugin painting. Backgound used djroil24 and bambi oil by djr.
Alan

well, i had to jump on this bandwagon too. a bit of contrast and sharpening and then just plain old smudge painting, but on a double layer... hard strokes on one, softened strokes on another.

Craig

I'm still in awe of you brush work Cathy; can't compete, but Alan did a fantastic jub with the Impressionist preset. I just emailed Danny and hopfully I can get the djroil24 preset to try for myself. :)

Nice brushed look Craig. Great painting Alan.

Thanks Ikroll, but I have to give a lot of credit to the fantastic Studio Artist and Painter programs. They have great brush styles that really enhance the work.

Cathy :D

... Impressionist, then mark this link (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8328). Thanks a heap to Danny for replying and passing this info along. :)

thanks cathy :)

i like yours as well, especially when enlarged. you really get the oil stroke effect then.

Craig

Hey you guys, all very different stuff, all very good.
I hope mines up to this standard.

Peter