Something out of the past, taken during a recent reinactment event.

BTW: "Civil War": Oxymoron?

~Danny~

May we have peace on earth and goodwill towards all men...

I followed Trimoon's sketch tutorial to a minor extent then placed the cutout soldier above and overlayed him on for some color.

This portrait speaks to me on several levels and I found it to be worthy challenge. Thank you Danny for posting it. Amen to your comment about the Civil War. And Amen to Jaykita for wishing us peace on earth. And at the risk of offending...May God bless us all.

Janet

First of all, I'm half in love with the beautiful man in this photo; his eyes truly mesmerize me.
Jaykita, I like how you mutted the background, making him, even more clearly, the focal point.
And Janet, this is the best interpretation from Trimoon's tutorial that I have seen. You really nailed it! :bigthmb:

Levels adj.
Corrected color.
Hue & Sat adjustment.
Simplified and masked.
Created backdrop.
Overlayed BD.
SketchMaster in portions.
Xero clairity.
Ran Nik brilliance, midnight.

Danny:
A nice image to work on:
1. Did levels and hue & saturation to adjust image.
2. Used Shan Canfields tutorial for a sketch affect. I hope someday she will get time to finish the tutorial, I know she is busy.
3. Used a Photoshop charcoal brush to color in.
4. Finished with extension frames.
Bob

Wonderfully varied and superb results.... :bow:

PaintShopPro8.01

Duped original image twice.
3rd Image - Applied a PSP8 Brustroke/square sponge
2nd Image - left as is...
Back to original image...

Added a raster layer and filled with white, reducing opacity.
Added a raster layer and selected a Paintbrush
Foreground Pattern - selected Image 2
Background Pattern - selected Image 3
Ticked 'Wet Look' Box
Applied brushstroke all over image at 50% opacity
Then again over the soldier only at 90%

Merged top two layers. Duped Merged layers.
L3 - Mode Multiply 50%
Merged top two layers again. Applied some AIM/USM to emphasise
brushtrokes on L2.

Merged top two layers and deleted bottom layer.
Canvas texture applied twice.
Increased colour saturation.

Danny:
A nice image to work on:
1. Did levels and hue & saturation to adjust image.
2. Used Shan Canfields tutorial for a sketch affect. I hope someday she will get time to finish the tutorial, I know she is busy.
3. Used a Photoshop charcoal brush to color in.
4. Finished with extension frames.
Bob

Bob:

I like this a lot. One of your best works, yet. I hope you print and frame this one.

I, too, hope Shan finishes her charcoal tutorial someday. She is very, very talented.

~Danny~

Beautiful work! Janet I especially like your rendition, it really gives a mood to the image.

Sherry

I am back from vacation

Manju, I only have two words to describe your effort.... Ewwww Kewl!

WTG.

Janet

Hi, I''ve been lurking here for a while and I thought it was time to try one of these challenges. I used two more civil war pictures to form a sort of collage. I extracted the soldier and desaturated him. Then I created a sort of sepia tone on the entire image in an adjustment layer, did some burning, and finally, played with the liquify plug in. I'm sure I missed some steps, but I rarely do things the same way twice anyway :tongue:

Phil

Earthman,

Welcome and what a great way to make an entrance. Great collage and very inspiring.

If i may comment on one point though, the civil war soldier has his back to the the rest of the picture, now the jury is still out on this one, as it can be interpreted as putting the past behind him, in that sense seems to be a well thought out image, however my eye leads off the page and i find it to be a little distracting.

If the Civil War Soldier was better placed on the canvas, then perhaps it would help to balance the image a bit better.

Please take these comments with a pinch of salt, your work is fantastic, but i thought i would mention it nontheless.

Would love to see the same theme but with a slight variance.

Hi Axleuk,
and thanks for the welcome :happy: I was trying to somehow show what this soldier might be thinking... all the death he has seen in his time. That was why I used the liquify effect, to give the two pictures behind him a dream-like feel. It didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned, though. I agree with you that the composition needs work. Much too heavy on the left. Maybe if I lightened the cemetary pic it would help. Perhaps I'll fool around with this more and resubmit it. Thanks for your critique. I really do appreciate it.

Phil

Hi Phil:

Let me add my welcome.

Yours is a very compelling creation. I applaud the introduction of the other images for effect. Two big thumbs up.

Look forward to seeing more of your handiwork in the future. Glad you took the plunge.

~Danny~

What a thought provoking picture and very nicely executed. It certainly makes a statement. My only comment (I hope you still have the layered file) would be to flip the background so it moves right to left and place the soldier on the right side of the composition.

Janet

P.S. On second thought, forget the flipping. I like it the way it is.

Wow, I don't know how to discuss this one. I lurk on this site and play with the methods discussed but this thread has me stopped. Most times the images started with and created are 'art' meaning I see them as how to take a subject and maybe tell something but more likely to show something 'pretty' [I know thats not the word I need to use but the only one I can think of].

This image started out the same, lets see how people make a different piece of art of what they see. I had decided that LQQKER had made a phenomenal portrait, then I came to earthman's statement.

I am floored. No matter what others may think of his composition or methodology, That may be one of the strongest statements of war I've ever seen.

I'm not even going to try to edit this cause if I didn't get across the passion this image brings to me, If I failed to state it the way I feel, I'm sorry.

Earthmen, well done.

Robert

Thanks for all your kind words. In the cold weather, my work slows way down, so I'm able to fool around with photoshop more than usual. This site is a great resource for knowlege and inspiration. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute in some way.

Welcome to the forum Phil its a pleasure to see such a interesting collage...Very inspiring, its a picture to make a person think isn't it...Well done!

Legacy

Thanx Legacy :wavey:

This thread is a gallery of wonderful portraits.
I did this with Painter impasto & clone brushes on a canvas texture.
http://www.pbase.com/image/39491289

Absolutely marvellous Raniday! :thumbsup:

:rainbow: Why thank you, Neve! I really love your art in this forum, so your opinion is important to me. I'm just now getting brave enough to play in Painter, and I'm enjoying it.

I'm enjoying Painter too Raniday....but still tend to get tied up in knots over things that are simple in Paint Shop Pro but don't appear to be so simple in Painter. :dizzy: :dizzy:

Exactly, Neve. I get irritated with myself for not knowing my way around Painter as easily as I do Paint Shop Pro. I don't think it's as intuitive as Paint Shop Pro, but I'm trying to make myself open it more often and get in there and do something, anything to get more familiar with it.

Seems like I'm missing out on a lot of fun. raniday's impasto is a pretty good Painter commercial. Meanwhile...A bit of art-history
Watercolour background, oils up front.

Rô

Seems like I'm missing out on a lot of fun. raniday's impasto is a pretty good Painter commercial. Meanwhile...A bit of art-history
Watercolour background, oils up front.

Rô

ByRo, is that good? :happy: I'll take it as a compliment and much appreciated as your tutorial was one of the things that got me into Painter.

This one of yours is a very interesting effect (Done in Painter?). I hadn't thought of combining watercolor with oils because in the real world I could never do that. I gotta think outside the box on this stuff!

Larger Image (http://www.pbase.com/trimoon/image/39655419.jpg)

Steve, I'm sure this man would be honored and proud to have your portrait enlarged, framed, and displayed in his home. Absolutely top notch no question!

Janet

Trimoon, this is wonderful. Could you please give some details of how you achieved it?

I couldn't decide which made the statement I was aiming for, roses or no roses. So I posted both. Danny said it all when he posted the picture of the reenacter. Civil war = oxymoron.

Janet

Thank all of you for your kind words.

The first thing I did was to work on the background for it. This was done by creating a new layer and filling it with a burgandy color.

Next I created a new layer, which makes this a total of three layers -- the original layer, a second layer filled with the burgandy and now this third layer, where I'm going to use a special paint brush preset that you can download from my website (trimoon.com). The name is Art 334.

I applied this on the third layer. What it does is paint a combination of the red and white. Now, this brush is tricky. If you let up off the mouse button, it will leave overlapping layers. In other words, hold the button down and don't let up. The overlapping layers is okay for another technique, but for this one, you need a continuous flow, without overlapping each other.

Now, I create a fourth layer (a new layer) and I set the blending mode to hard light.

I use the art history brush here to repaint the soldier only -- not the background. I alternate between two presets that you can get from my website on the download page. They are the only two art history brush presets that I have there.

The technique that I use is best done with a tablet but can be done with a mouse. They are just very short strokes -- letting up on the mouse, or picking up on the pen. Don't hold the mouse down and just scribble in the image. You'll just get a bunch of blotchy colors. Remember, the larger brush tip, the wider the brush strokes. The smaller the tip, the more detail. I like to do the detail around the eyes, nose, ears and mouth, leaving the broad strokes for areas such as the forehead, cheek, the coat area, etc.

For dark areas, I may apply the art history brush to another layer with the blending mode set to screen. This will bring out more detail in dark areas.

The trick here is not to restrict yourself to applying this technique to one area. I start off using a blending mode of hard light, but I may create several more layers using different blending modes to create the total image. These are usually dependent on the image itself and what's called for. This particular soldier, I used about four layers using different blending modes to create the overall finish. By the way, I also used one layer using a blending mode of multiply and adjusted the opacity.

You have so many options to help you create a final look that it's hard for me to sit here and tell you everything I did, since I didn't record it. I've gotten to where it's intuitive. I'll see a problem and I know what to do. Painting this sort of thing is multidimensional and it's very hard for me to explain to you what I do. That's why I sometimes make a video and record the whole session and then come back and explain it verbally. The problem there is that the videos are very large and cannot be downloaded from my site due to the bandwidth. Anyway, now I'm just rambling.

Steve

Janet, what a creative idea.
Steve, I've printed out your directions. I think everyone with a computer has your CD's except me, and that's only because I'm so awful about getting around to doing things, but all of your art that I've seen here and in other forums is awesome! I'm ordering this week.
catherine

Hi, Danny, long-time-no-post. But I was moved by some of the renditions here and was inspired to contribute. One of the most popular Civil War songs was "Just Before the Battle, Mother" and that inspired me to do this.
Warmest regards, Bill

Bill, that looks so old, so real. It could almost have been a picture from the 1860s.

Janet

Thank you for your explanation. Makes perfect sense.

Hi, Danny, long-time-no-post. But I was moved by some of the renditions here and was inspired to contribute. One of the most popular Civil War songs was "Just Before the Battle, Mother" and that inspired me to do this.
Warmest regards, Bill

Bill:

Seeing your post was a sight for sore eyes. This is a spendid job of aging and framing.

I hope you're inspired again soon -- so you can once again inspire us.

~Danny~

....and his shiny new medal!

T

....and his shiny new medal!

THey, Tyler...

Welcome aboard.

A simple, but elegant addition. Nicely done. Hope you'll jump into a few more of the fun little projects.

~Danny~

DannyRaphael

I hope too...thanks for the welcome!

On this one I did the following:

Curves Adjustment to pump up contrast.
Dial a Dot Engraving (Under Stipple action)
DarkenEdgesCorners. atn
TLR Toner: Orange High
Filters Unlimited: Aged Film

Cheers
Dave

Brushwork over a yellow bckgr with chalk brush. Tweaked colors some - ps7.

Terrific work :bow: Judy!

Terrific work :bow: Judy!
Ditto what Neve said.

All Photoshop? I'da never guessed that.

Ditto what Neve said.

All Photoshop? I'da never guessed that.
Thank you Danny, Neve!
Yep, all ps7, better believe it! Got the idea from this site. (http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/portrait-art-free-lesson/portrait-art-free-lesson-3.htm) though this lesson is not a digital one.

I agree, Judy, that is quite extraordinary!
Bill

:thumbsup: Well done Judy translating that tut to suit your needs in Photoshop....you're not just a pretty face :classic:

What a thread, great photo and stunning renditions by every one

Palms

Peps, these are all great. This is such a wonderful portrait to work on. Thank you so much for the opportunity to work on it.

I first extracted the man and painted him with the Pattern Stamp Tool. Added the flag and used the PST tool on it and another PST for the background. Merged them all and then took them over to painter and added an acrylics brush layer (bold brush strokes) and a little pencil pencil clone to bring back eye detail. Back to Photoshop for canvas texture.

had to have another try at this one, with the ahb

Palms

You da woMAN, Palms! Very nice

Driven by all the great posts to have a go at this pic, just painted and blended with new background

Thanks Swampy
Gilbert excellent i really like your style which seems to be improving all the time

Palms

Earthman....fantastic!

I think also that the soldier with his back to the carnage that he has seen adds the poignant & somber feeling that gives this piece real meaning.

You really worked on this one and it shows.

Steve C.

So many good ones here that it's hard to jump in. Nevertheless, here is my interpretation of the photo after it arrived home after the war.

Steve C.

A sad soldier...

U guys are just getting tooooo good.

My take on this one.

Peter

Guys, really admirable works.

After seeing all the great interpretations of this young soldier I decided to keep it simple and do a sketch.

bcarll

After seeing all the great interpretations of this young soldier I decided to keep it simple and do a sketch.

bcarll

simple maybe but equally effective

Hi, Danny, long-time-no-post. But I was moved by some of the renditions here and was inspired to contribute. One of the most popular Civil War songs was "Just Before the Battle, Mother" and that inspired me to do this.
Warmest regards, Bill

I can see you were inspired. This is just great! I've seen actual pictures of my ancestors in the civil war and you have captured the look perfectly, even down to the frame type.

Congratulations.

Steve C.

Would like to have placed a tear on the cheek of my soldier. Anyone know how to do that?

bcarll

I wanted to practice so have come back to one of my favorite threads ( again )

Bcarll it might be a bit late ( well 4 months ) but is this tut of any use to you ? it is for water droplets which you may be able to make a teardrop out of !

http://photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/water-drops/

Palms

Palms I think you practicing days are over that is very good, I like it.

Peter

Absolutely wonderful work palms. I'm sure this reenactor would be proud. Thank you for bringing this thread back to life.

Janet

I too keep coming back to this great civil war picture. Palms you did a great job with your portrait and it inspired me to give it a try. I kept the background just blurred it out. It has some interesting colors in it and shapes so I decided to let it stay in the portrait. This picture is loaded with texture so I didn't texture the finished painting. Hope I did well using this technique.

bcarll

Photoshop--- thanks for the water droplet lead --

bcarl you done great, and your treatment of the background is spot on, I think you are right about the colours and textures, maybe that is what has the appeal

Palms