I took this close up photo of a young, tame, Eagle Owl during a visit to the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Many people feel uneasy looking so closely at such a penetrating stare - does it affect you in that way ?
Perhaps the talented people on here would like to play artistically with the photo. MY attempt involved the following stages ( as far as I remember ) :

Dup Bkgrnd
Run BuzzPro Simplify 1
Impressionist - Trimoon -Chalk Sketch Steve II - with default settings
reduce opacity of layer
Texturizer layer - canvas - 30% opacity

I will be intrigued to see other interpretations - thanks

What a fascinating picture! I can't wait to get started on this one.

What a co-incidence...I was sitting yesterday with a photo of a stream and rocks from the Isle of Arran and working on it in Painter!

This is a rare photo Xplorer and looking forward to creating with it, many thanks. Your result is marvellous :wavey:

Anyhow, I had a Hoot playin with this image.
Smart Blur Edges
Painted Cartoon
Painted Cartoon (no I didn't hiccup)
PopArtist reduced to taste

Cheers
Dave

Great photo, xplorer!

I started off in one direction, and ended up doing some things that erased what I had already done (!!?) Did sharpen/aniso, but then thought he should be looking out of something, and then ended up running the zoom blur on a larger canvas.

Fascinating and very creative results CJ and Duv :bigthmb:

Painter 8.1

Cloners/Fine Gouache Cloner 15, Water Color Fine Cloner, and minor amount of Soft Cloner.

Thoroughly enjoyed this, thank you.

Using image below...

Dupe bottom layer
L2 - BuzzSimplifier and Paint Engine/Soft Strokes/ Layer Opacity 68%

Wonderful results everyone - I think I got a bit carried away but I had fun anyway.

Christine

You certainly did :lmao: but with fantastic results!

WOW Xaran. Carried away or not, your results are wellllll......not nice... :lmao: .... But extremely well executed and very, very professional. I'm seriously impressed.

Janet

Well I got carried away too. I sort of drifted off into whatever this is.

I blurred feathers, ran 3 different Dragan actions, glass filter on eyes.

Phil, it's all your fault. K-SCOPE

Trying the new Caravaggio Filter from Xero.

Small amount of Buzz Simplifier
Xero/Caravaggio - 3/1/8/-45
AIM/USM

A subtle result

What an amazing display of creativity and talent. When I posted the original photo I never expected such a WIDE range of interpretations - FANTASTIC !!!

Neve- I really like your last effort - it has maintained the essential texture of the feathers but in a new and exciting way.

CJ - quite stunning ! I must try and replicate that effect and add to my repertoire.

Everyone else - enjoyed them all - very different from how I saw the image - which is the magic of this site. Thanks to you all

Graham

The cat that ate....errrr...the bird that ate....Whatever.

My cat and my student absolutely do NOT get along. When he saw this picture of the bird today, he had to manipulate the cat into it in some way. He left happy with his rather exotic creation, which left the cat's nose but not the eyes. With my imagination running wild by then, I decided to add the nose to the mix and this is the result of cats and birds being natural enemies. Who wins?

Rather bizarre but what the hey.

Janet

Hi Graham, Thank you....you can thank the New Caravaggio Xero Filter for this subtle retention of detail.

Here's one with Impressionist.

Compressed Levels
Ran twice: IP*Process: Adaptive Equalization
Ran twice: Impressionist: djr24 Oil: Image;88/95/104 Faded second to 45%

Cheers
Dave

Neve - that looks really good - another xero masterpiece.

Janet - that is excellent - very believable.

Wonderful ideas from everyone - I love the kaleidascopes - had a play with the Kaleidascope in Painter IX (If you don't know about this it is under the layer menu and dynamic plugins)

Christine

Alrighty then, Janet. Very good collaboration (if a bit unsettling) with your student on th 'cat bird'.

Hi Xplorer,

This started out as a photo of a glossy black ceramic head I have. I used the Liquify filter to distort it. As it was lit from only one side I duplicated and flipped it to make a whole face. I combined the two Layers back into one and created a Render Clouds Layer above this. I Selected the Highlights Ctrl+Alt+~(Tilde) and used that as a partial Mask.I ran the Stylize>Extrude filter followed by the Radial Zoom filter.

After this I created a Gradient Adjustment Layer with a Levels adjustment Layer to control the effect. I then duplicated the original Background i.e. Face Layer and dragged it to the top of the pile, finally I added a pair of Owls eyes and used Transform>Distort to fit them into the right spot, apart from that nothing else was changed.

Hope you like it.

Regards

Con Looymans

Absolutely amazing !!! Reading your technique to produce this art work it sounds so straight forward BUT I imagine there were LOTS of steps along the way that led nowhere. The end product certainly justifies the effort you put into the project. I would love to see the original image of the head that you started with - any chance ?

Hi Xplorer,

Thanks for all those kind words.

Here's the shot you asked for. Feel free to play with it to your hearts content.

Regards

Con Looymans