Almost a Painting

[byRo]

Judy, I think this is about the best painting of yours I've seen so far....and that is saying A LOT!!!
Just Perfect

Thank you for honouring my humble thread!

Rô

[Neve]

You're spot on Ro...Judy deserves the accolades. I came back for a second look

[Steve Conway]

Tried a few more cracks as you suggested. The Impasto still doesn't show as much as I would like, but this is as close as I have been able to come to the old cracked impasto rendering.

Steve

[SWEngineer]

Inspired by Ro's inspiration, here's my attempt at pointillism ala Elements 2:
- Resize picture to 800 pixels wide
- Ensure white is the background color & black the foreground color.
- Layers: (bottom to top)
A: BG.
Copy BG. Pointilize 3. Zoom way in. With magic wand set to 15%, click on a white area created by the pointillize filter. Save this selection & delete the layer.
B: Copy A. Underpainting (all settings basically zero).
C: Copy B. load selection. switch fore & backgnd color. Pointillize (3). Posterize 3. [opacity to 33%]
D: cp B. load selection. switch fore & backgnd color. Pointillize (3). Posterize 2. [opacity to 33%]
E: New layer. Fill with "towel" pattern. Invert. [Softlight, 23%]
F: Copy A. [Pinlight 40%]
G: Copy A. Highpass 3. [Overlay 100%]
H: Hue/Sat adjustment layer to tweak the color

Now resize back to 1115 pixels wide.

This is very sensitive to the size of the image you're working with. Without sizing down before processing, you get much finer "dots". Some might prefer this. I haven't been very impressed by the Pixelate:Pointillize filter, but I think the tricks used here help make it a useful tool.

-Mark

[DannyRaphael]

Judy...

Ditto what Ro said. Simply exceptional.

After prepping the image in Photoshop (isolated the ladies onto a separate layer, replaced background, simplified a bit with Photoshop Dry Brush filter), I switched over to Painter IX.

Cloned using Artists > Sargent, Artists > Captured Bristle and Jeremy's Fave 2 > Scotts_Sargent** brushes. Blended with Just Add Water and Grainy Blender. Applied Surface Effects to the background.

Back to Photoshop for some fine tuning: Cloning to fix a couple areas I missed in Painter, sharpened a bit, used Hue/Sat, Selective Color and Color Balance adjustment layers to mess with the colors.

** From Jeremy Sutton's, Painter IX Creativity CD.

[Kraellin]

steve,

i took another shot at it. this is only sort of what i wanted, but another look at it. my 'impasto' tends to go outside the lines too much, but does give some depth. the cracking would also tend to follow the hue and depth lines; mine doesnt. dont know how to do it, i'm afraid.

Craig

[byRo]

Mark, that's beautiful!
Gave you a lot of work - but it was well worth it.

(I thought my Art-History Pointillize brush was a bit complicated - but you beat me there)

Rô

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

i took another shot at it... Craig

Very creative, Craig. Great effect you achieved here.

[Kraellin]

danny,

i have to kind of chuckle here a bit. this wasnt the look i was going for, but thanks it was a 'best attempt' at achieving a look i had remembered seeing in an actual painting a long time ago. the painting was one of those where the paint itself is very thick, but age and no care has cracked it. think of the side of an old clapboard house with 20 coats of paint that hasnt been painted in 20 years and you'd have roughly what i'm looking for.

this particular attempt involved several layers, each with a different application of 'brushstrokes' in psp and another of 'fine leather' for the cracking. some other things were tried, but i think those were the things i ended up using. i also had to double the file size after doing this so that you could see the effect up close.

Craig

[Steve Conway]

Craig, the problem for me is when I apply the cracks after the impasto, the impasto tends to be dimished. I tried re-doing the impasto on another layer over the cracks, but still not enough of it shows through.

Also you are right that the cracks would tend to follow the thick lines of the impasto paint application. That may have to be painted in to look exactly like what you are trying to achieve.

Steve

Originally Posted by Kraellin

steve,

i took another shot at it. this is only sort of what i wanted, but another look at it. my 'impasto' tends to go outside the lines too much, but does give some depth. the cracking would also tend to follow the hue and depth lines; mine doesnt. dont know how to do it, i'm afraid.

Craig

[Kraellin]

steve,

yup, i had the same problem. i ended up with 3 different layers of brushstrokes/impasto and the one layer of fine leather for the cracking. even with rearranging the order of the layers and changing opacities, it was still quite difficult to get the desired result. and one additional problem i had, which could prolly be cured with masking, is that i wanted the strokes to be inside each object within the overal image. like, give a fairly smooth edge to the outline of each woman, but have the full impasto effect within and on each woman's face.

and yes, you may be correct; it may have to be done by hand painting. i'll play around some more with it. maybe some edge enhance or erode or some of those edge finding tools would help.

thanks for the effort, steve. you came REAL close and gave me some ideas and inspiration. and thinking on all this as i write this post, it may be possible to simply make a custom texture myself and apply it to that image. hmmmm.....

Craig

[raniday]

Too many fabulous paintings to name them all, but since I'm posting right beneath Judi, I'll say LOVE YOUR COLORS!
And here's mine, started off w/ Art History Brushes, then to Painter IX where I mainly used the Funky Chunky brush, then back to PS for Trimoon's canvas texture.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by raniday

.........started off w/ Art History Brushes, then to Painter IX

I've seen this mentioned before - and it always ends up as a beautiful rendition. What sort of Art History Brush do you use?

Rô

[raniday]

Thanks, Ro. My favorite Art History brushes are Impressionist, Oil Sketch & Champagne.

[Swampy]

Don't think so, Craig. I've never seen one

Lovely picture.. Here's my version.

A little Painter a little Photoshop