Creative interpretations: Flowers - Orange and brave little Crocus

[DannyRaphael]

Photo courtesy of L.Nieminen.

~Danny~

[Xaran]

Painter 9

Christine

[raniday]

I had to play with this brave little crocus; they're one of my favorite flowers.
A simple outline, then increased color saturation and applied noise median.
http://www.pbase.com/image/37931728

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by raniday

I had to play with this brave little crocus; they're one of my favorite flowers.
A simple outline, then increased color saturation and applied noise median.
http://www.pbase.com/image/37931728

I like your interpretation. Uncomplicated, but elegant.

Thanks for the flower name. Other than roses and carnations, I'm pretty clueless in that regard!

- - - - - - - -

Christine:

Very painterly results.

How do you like Painter IX so far? From which version did you upgrade?

~Danny~

[Janet Petty]

I'm SO glad you posted a flower. I'm already beginning to wish for the brave little spring flowers. This was a nice spring "fix".

Thanks,
Janet

Ok. I got caught. Chuckle. Usually I keep better track of what I'm doing than this time when I was playing around while waiting for the dryer to buzz.

To the best of my somewhat faulty memory, it goes something like this...

I began by trying to replace the colors (or lack thereof) in the background. Next, I did the filter>smart blur>find edges and invert on a separate layer, moved it to the top and turned it off. Followed my somewhat modified version of Trimoon's sketch that I'm creating an action for. Copied the replace color layer and set it one step below the find edges layer and put the blending mode on color. Turned on the find edges layer and set it to color burn at about 20 percent opacity. Erased some of the more annoying lines and almost done. The last step was to create a merged layer and smudge with a large brush in the background.

[raniday]

You don't get off that easily, Janet How'd ya do it?? Very soft and painterly.
cat

[glikster]

I'm at work and it's a slow day, but I was just playing and now I'm wracking my brain to remember what I did.
Lemme see if I can remember:
I duped the BG.
Then I isolated the flower as a selection and desaturated the background area.
Then I colorized the background selection with the Hue/Saturation adjustment.
Then I ran Impressionist: Sumi-e: Colored Strokes on Grey. Fade to Lighten.
Impressionist: Sumi-e: Dry Strokes on Pitted Stone
Impressionist: Sumi-e: Fine Ghost Brush. Fade to Darken (I think)
Impressionist: Sumi-e: Fine Ghost Brush, but I changed the brush to the creecent moon and decreased the brush size. Fade to Soft Light and lower Opacity.
Then I started on the flower. I basically stylized it with Find Edges/Diffuse: Anisotropic/Luminosity.
Then I added a gradient layer with a blend mode to Overlay to boost the blossom's color.
I stamped visible (but only the flower selection) and ran all of the same Impressionist filters I ran on the background.
Then I stuck a Find Edges/Diffuse:Anisotropic layer of the flower on top and set it to Overlay and lowered the Opacity.

I think that's it.

[Xaran]

Danny,

I upgraded from 8 which was the first full version I had, never liked the interface before that. I like it but I find you need PS to do any retouching first. Got Helen Yancy's DVD for Christmas - now I like it even more.

Christine

[jaykita]

My watercolor effect.
I used corel painter8 - cloning with coarse airbrush, blending with water, and the watercolor filter in ps7. Sandstone texture.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by jaykita

My watercolor effect.
I used corel painter8 - cloning with coarse airbrush, blending with water, and the watercolor filter in ps7. Sandstone texture.

Holy smoke, this is awesome.

You did the Photoshop Watercolor filter after the Painter work?

[Manjumena]

some beautiful art here
here's my contribution

[Neve]

These are ALL marvellous!

Painter 8.1
Used Wet Gouache Rd 20 throughout.
Finished off in PSP8.01 - cropped and added matte frame.

[glikster]

the renditions here and all over this forum are so inspirational. I am curious if Manjumena is willing to share with us his methods. The two images I have seen by you have astounded me!

[jaykita]

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

Holy smoke, this is awesome.

You did the Photoshop Watercolor filter after the Painter work?

Absolutely. I used 2 render-clouds layers for the color, then the watercolor filter, and Voila!!

[isanl]

My try

1. desaturate
2. invert - color dodge
3. gaussian blur
4. merge visible (multiply)
5. equalize
5.diffuse-anisotropic
6.cutout

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by isanl

My try

1. desaturate
2. invert - color dodge
3. gaussian blur
4. merge visible (multiply)
5. equalize
5.diffuse-anisotropic
6.cutout

It's been a few months since you've posted. Welcome back.

I hope your schedule will allow you to continue participating. The more, the merrier!

~Danny~

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Manjumena

some beautiful art here
here's my contribution

Lovely as usual, Manju.

I understand (now) how to get the background, which works very well in this one.

Teach us more:
What did you do to get the random rippled effect once you rendered the BG?

~Danny~

[earthman]

I really like jaykita's image. Very delicate.

For my interpretation I started with a cracked earth texture I found on the web and played with the perspective tool untill I liked it.
I copied the resulting image and used it as an alpha channel.
Then I went to lighting effects and used the alpha channel I created as a texture cahnnel.
For the sky I used a picture I took, desaturated it, and played with the curves to get that effect.
I painted a thick blue stripe across the horizon and lowered the opacity to give the ground some depth.
Finally, I created a color balance adjustment layer on the whole image.
Oh, I also applied the add noise filter to the whole image

[Neve]

Well done Earthman, I would've been more impressed if there was more red colouring though in the sky and cracked earth. It is still very effective irrespective.

[SWEngineer]

When I first saw this thread, I thought Danny's title was perfect... a very brave flower to grow in that nasty gray muck. I think Earthman took the title to heart turning the muck into much worse (from a flower's perspective).

Painter users are starting to show their "unfair" advantage here. What great & varied results!

I'm joining the majority here giving the flower nothing to fear in an overly complicated sketch rendition... Isolated the flower on its own layer. Created a new background (Clouds, Diff. Clouds, Twirl, Levels, Angled Strokes, & Diffuse>Anisotropic) that I feared was too busy, Merged decolored version of the flower onto the background. Did the ColorDodge sketch trick, but ran Angled Strokes on the top layer instead of GBlur. Moved to top. Multiply mode with layer mask to tone down the sketch lines in the flower itself. Used the isolated color flower with a ShagRug pattern layer in Colorburn mode above. Merge the patt. layer down. Copy this and ran Spatter. Both layers set to reduced opacities. Put a light colored RenderClouds layer below this for some muted background color. Merged all visible to a new layer and deleted some of the background using a highly feathered selection. Put a white layer below this and cropped to taste.

-Mark

[Neve]

Very effective result SWE. I like the textures and colouring.... and the retention of the ground texture as a background.

[LQQKER]

Cropped the image.
Created a bg with virtual painter and layer styles.
Added some canvas.
Several contrast adj.
Copied BG and embossed as an overlay layer.
Fairy obtained using hemera.
Several layer adj on fairy.
Hue & Sat adjustment.
Simplified a few times.
Created frame with sketchmaster and layer styles.
Added some shadows and highlights.
Softened edges.
Flattened contrast and colors by adjusting layer opacity.
Nik foliage.

[Janet Petty]

LQQKER, that is very well done. I like the fantasy touch. The tiny fairy looks like she belongs there in fact as well as in execution of your technique. Adorable!

Janet

[JustChecking]

WOW! so many wonderful results here




i wanted mine to look a bit more watercolour like... didn't get there