Creative interpretations: Flowers - Wallflowers

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Trimoon

Thank you for your kind words. This was a great picture to work with and I loved the colors.

The art history brush is intimidating at first, but it is very easy to use. A lot of people have problems in the very beginning because they don't know how to get started. They bring the image up and then try to use the art history brush but it won't work. A way around this is to do all your adjustments to the image (such as size and color) and then save it. Makesure you close the image and then reopen. As long as you don't change the size of the image, the art history brush will work from then on. With the image open, I ususally create a second layer and apply some textured paper to it. I usually use a color for this paper straight from the original image. Then I'll add some texture. There are a lot of ways of doing this, but I won't go into that now. I create another new layer, set the blending mode to hard light and then I start painting with my art history brush. When I through painting it all in, I'll over sharpen it using unsharp mask, adjusting the sliders back and forth until I get what I'm looking for. This usually brings out the color. From this point, there is really no way of telling which point I'll go. I usually just play around until I get something I like and add texture and flatten. That's what I did for this image. I know this is not a step-by-step, but I am finishing up a long-promised tutorial on this technique. This technique actually will let you do the so-called gragan technique or the above technique illustrated by these flowers. It's all the same. The tutorial will be in PDF form and will be free for download and can even be posted there. If you desire more than PDF, there will be videos available for order, but I feel that the PDF will be more than adequate.
Steve

Thanks, Steve, for once again sharing some of your methods with us.

You bet, when the .pdf is ready to go, give me a yell. We'll definitely find a place for it. Sure appreciate the offer.

~Danny~

[SWEngineer]

Nice work all.

BG. Crop, tweak composition, adjust tone & colors
A: copy BG. Amphisoft Simplifier. Impressionist JaykitaWC2 modified.
B: copy A. 2X Impressionist same settings
C: TornEdges sketch on a bandpass layer (0.7 to 3). (SoftLigth).
D: an Impressionist texture only layer. (Overlay)

-Mark