Kelly-Anne

[retpmikl]

Wanted to take a try on an Amerindian children's face (they got lovely faces). Curious to see what you, so imaginative and talented people, can do with this pic.

[retpmikl]

Not good enough to draw a face yet so started from a photo I took of Kelly-Anne (one of my students) and worked in Painter 7.

Used the Clone to get the contours. For the background, used Smeary Flat with white, low opacity and various Feature settings. For the hairs, took the Round Camel Hair with Variability V set to 6-12 % and different colors going from olive to dark browns and black. For the face, created a new Color set from some of the colors of the original and worked with Round Camel hair, Smeary Flat and Opaque Flat, again with variability set to 6-12 %. For the eyes, I just cloned them with the Camel Oil Cloner. For the sweater, used different original colors mixed with 'picked-up' colors (from the colors wheel) with Smeary Flat, Variable Round and Variable Flat and, still, Variability V in the 6-12 %. Saved in TIFF. In PS7, boosted the Saturation a bit and added Canvas texture.

From what is 'hand made' : the hairs are not bad I think ; I've missed the eyebrows, the contours of the eyes, and the nose. I kinda like the mouth. And the overall look, I think, is not so bad. What do you think ?

[jerry]

Thought I'd try a painted portrait of this youngster..This was done in ps7 using Phyllis's newest painting technique..

Mik..Your Painter potrait is really nice..I am still struggling with that program..I saw the painting that you did from scratch on dpreview..Really excellent..

Jerry

[Sanda]

Here's my attempt at this beautiful girl .

[retpmikl]

Thanks, Jerry. If you're struggling with Painter, you're definitely not struggling with PS7. You made a nicer portrait a so short time. I worked about 8 hours to do mine ! I'll have to learn Phyllis's newest painting technique.

Sanda,
and she's still beautiful on your image. Nice work.

[CJ Swartz]

Wanted to create an old style look... Used one layer of palette knife, and another of glowing edges.

[jrolinc]

Well, spending more time actually doing now than reading about how to do.

Anyhow, I used David Rowley's Hollywood Bowl action, played around with Saturation, Hue a bit. Worked with one layer (Find Edges I believe) setting the Blend Mode to Darken.

Added a tiny highlight back into her eyes (not sure I like em...but, let me know).

Added the vignette, and Viola!

Pretty quick and easy...but it allows for me to see how others wrote actions and then what changes I can make with those.

[Blacknight]

Some curves and blend modes and sharpen and history brush work.

[themanda]

Such a great photo! Thanks for letting us use it.

Mikl--I really like the strong graphic feel to this one. great texture and flow.

Jerry--This is lovely! I was practicing Phyllis' technique this afternoon and found it very difficult to acheive smooth results. Everyone I did came out looking like they had lizard skin. You did a great job on this!

Sandra--Wonderful job! She's lovely!

CJ--I think you did a terrific job of capturing the American Indian spirit here. This almost feels like it's one step away from being a sand painting.

JR--I like what you did to her eyes. Good call!

BK--I always enjoy the direction you take your images. I'm afraid I'm not quite that brave! You consistently turn out wonderful images.

I did my usual portraity thing. I'm still trying to find the best background color for my blend modes, though. I just can't get the depth of color and lighting that I'm after. Can't quiiiiittte reach it. Maybe I need to start using Painter....

[Pam]

Very creative and beautiful entries so far.

I'm still working on my portrait technique...


Pam

[pstewart]

Thanks for the great image to work on! Got any more student portraits? Could always use more great faces for the minis: pstewart@innographx.com --hint hint.

Mikl, wow...you are really painting in Painter! You ought to see what you can do with a brush and canvas and oils instead of pen, slate and pixels!

Jerry, great job. Love the hair...what brush did you use?

Sanda, the soft simple coloration and the coal black hair is very effective.

CJ, looks like you bought this in a southwest souvenir shop...the colored outlining is daring but works with the subject.

Eye highlights look good to me. I especially like the effect the fine outlining had on her eyebrows, mouth and shirt.

BK, you’ve made her shimmer and shine...like her hair is made of tiny glass beads!

Amanda, what a look! Like she’s painted on soft velvety satin...wow!

Chuck, wonderful! I especially like the first since it looks like a genuine old photo. And there is certainly nothing “incorrect” politically or otherwise in showing ethnic ancestry. I would think any Native American would be proud of their heritage.

Pam, that’s terrific...looks like a magazine illustration. I’d love to know how you did that. Please tell...please?

Originally posted by themanda
I was practicing Phyllis' technique this afternoon and found it very difficult to acheive smooth results. Everyone I did came out looking like they had lizard skin. You did a great job on this!

If you got "lizard skin" perhaps your brush was too small or strokes too short? I don't know what size Jerry used, but I used a rather large brush and fairly long strokes. I also "scrubbed" the brush back and forth in many places to get smoother blending. Also, check the blend mode settings for the brush and see if a different setting will help with certain areas.

Phyllis

[retpmikl]

Very nice work everybody, lots of originality, as usual.

Chuck, you're not incorrect at all. That's a nice work. I like the color one cause she looks great (we wouldn't know she's only 7) but, as Phyllis, I prefer the first one for the old photo look.

Phyllis, ya, sure I've got lots of photos of 'my' kids. Will send you some as soon as I've got time, and their permission.

[DannyRaphael]

Again, a marvelous group of intrepretations everyone. Well done.

On this one, I took a pretty basic route for openers. These are the general steps. I did some tweaking not detailed here, but this is pretty close.:
* Duplicated BG, desaturated
* Duplicated the desaturated layer, changed blend mode to color dodge, inverted the image and applied Gaussian blur, set opacity to about 90%
* Added a Levels adjustment layer to tweak contrast
* Added a Brightness / Contrast adjustment layer to control color tone (next step)
* Added a new layer onto which color was restored using the History brush; tweaked color tone with BC adjustment layer above.
* Flattened and duplicated resulting BG; applied Colored Pencil filter and blended at about 50% Normal.

Good start, but not quite "rugged enough." So...
* Flattened and duplicated resulting BG and applied David Rowley Cardiff Bay technique to this layer. Blended with layer below with a layer mask.
* Flattened again and duplicated the resulting layer. Ran Emboss filter against it and set blend mode to Overlay. Then tried numerous texture generating filters, e.g., Ocean Ripple, Dry Brush, Palette Knife, Sprayed Strokes, etc., to "rough this one up" a bit, giving it some texture character.
* Flattened and applied the frame.

Cheers...
~DannyR~

[Blacknight]

Originally posted by jerry
Thought I'd try a painted portrait of this youngster..This was done in ps7 using Phyllis's newest painting technique..

THAT is the face I had in my mind. I liked what I did except I couldn't get THAt face. Where is Phyllis's newest painting technique?

[pstewart]

Originally posted by Blacknight
Where is Phyllis's newest painting technique?

In mini challenge #85 - Prison Guard:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/sho...0&pagenumber=2

The post is the one that accompanies the picture named painting.jpg.

Phyllis