Creative Interpretations - Cherry Blossom Bridge

[Swampy]

Thought this might be a good picture to paint. One of my free wall paper finds.

[Juergen D]

Colors, colors...

Juergen

[Steve Conway]

Just smearing a little paint around.

Looks like Japan in late March or April.

Steve C.

[Peter S]

Swampy if you go to the trouble of postin em, I just have to do em.

Thanks.

Peter

[0lBaldy]

Swampy, Your timing is pretty good.. on Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands the cherry blossoms begin to bloom in late January, and the area is covered with pink flowers. I think the Cherry Blossom Festival in Okinawa is known as the earliest cherry blossom festival in Japan.

At least thats the way I remember it from long ago in the distant past!

[Swampy]

Juergen, Steve, Pete, OB! Great postings. I thought the folks up in the frozen north would like to paint a little touch of spring. :-)

[lkroll]

Sort of pointillistic.

[Kraellin]

gorgeous original picture, dee dee! but what i really loved was that you did the 'cherry blossums falling'! beautiful

[Mining Art]

Tried to make a focal point of the bridge. Lost my way a bit on the foreground colors, but just left it that way. Like all the renditions presented of such a beautiful spot.

[Swampy]

Super LK and MA!

Craig, the "falling blossoms" was not intentional. I think it's more a result of the texture in my paint brushes letting white areas of canvas show through. :-)

[mikajomc]

Swampy- I love this photo! I lived in Japan for awhile and this is very nostalgic!
All versions have been great so far.
Baldy- I especially like the blue sky you added!

Here's mine-
Not quite sure how I ended up here. I know I used the Crystalization filter and masked that to allow an Art History Brush layer to peak through. I do know I used your watercolor brush Swampy Love that one!

-jordan in cinci

[Kraellin]

well, intentional or not, dee dee, i loved it

i had a hard time coming up with something on this one. i worked in Paint Shop Pro for a while and transferred some of that to filter forge, but didnt like any of that, so i tried filter forge by itself and worked through many, many filters trying to find something i liked and still no go. so, i put it away last night and tried fresh today.

so, i remembered a filter by northernshadow called 'chinese watercolor' which i had revised a tiny bit and pulled that one up. it still wasnt quite what i wanted, so i went ahead and modded it further and finally found what i was looking for

i hope this didnt lose too much. i had to compress it down quite a bit

[Swampy]

Jordan, that is lovely. I've got to explore the crystalize filter. I do use "facet" often to push pixels around before painting.

Craig, Wow... that is brilliant. :-)

[mikajomc]

Craig- that is one very cool filter!

I just had to play with this one again.
I feel like I've finally read enough here at RetouchPro that I can think about what look I'm aiming for and actually have some idea how to do that. Insead of just randomly trying things.
I'm very pleased with how it came out.
This is becoming very addicting!!

[Kraellin]

thank you, dee dee

i credit northernshadow, also. she's made some very incredible filters for filter forge. in fact, i think she has about the highest rating of quality filters to average filters in the FF library. i think my ratios is something like 1 quality in 6 where her's is something like 1 in 2. so, i borrowed from the master

and thank you, mikajomc

i like yours, as well. is that motion blur, guassian or smudging on that one?

frankly, i like everyone's here.

someday, we shld do an inverse photo art on an image. take a great photo and see how badly we can mess it up

[mikajomc]

An inverse photo challenge! Now that would be a hoot, Craig!!!

No motion or gaussian blurs. And I haven't been able to master smudging yet!
This was a lot of using the pattern stamp tool for color. And a cutout layer to bring back some of the details. Plus a texture layer and a find egges layer. Mostly I was just playing around with different watercolor brushes to see what they would do. Oh, and I used the history brush just a little to bring back some of the detail in the bridge. I'm wondering if I should've brought back a little detail in the trees too...but oh well. It's done and posted.

And maybe you're just being nice to a newbie...but thank you for asking about my technique

-jordan in cinci

[Kraellin]

well, thank you, jordan always interested in how folks do things (newbie or not ).

[Swampy]

Thanks for the workflow, Jordan. (Mumble, mumble... I gotta explore the cutout filter).

[Juergen D]

Originally Posted by Swampy

(Mumble, mumble... I gotta explore the cutout filter)

That is actually my favorite filter for this type of work... I used it in my rendition, too.

Juergen