Creative Portraits: Watercolor Toddler (Trimoon)

[Trimoon]

I’ve cropped this to hide the area I’m having trouble with (the hair).

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Trimoon's watercolor tutorial CD is available at www.Trimoon.com. - djr

[Trimoon]

The Photo

[Blacknight]

TOO cute not to play with! Is that Mommy in the background?

[Blacknight]

More detail in the hair, less watercolor look...

[Blacknight]

I'll stop now - was trying for something in-between sketch and watercolor.

[collinf]

Played with "David's Watercolour" action, rather liked the effect, thought I'd post it. Cropped a little off the top, but nothing else.

Collin

[DannyRaphael]

Let's see what you can do with a not-so-good pic to work with (2nd post).

[Neve]

A quick one...

Resized image to 140%
PR Retouche/PR Brightness
Auto Hue and Sat
Auto Contrast
Neat Image/Noise Reduction
Soft Focus
Xero Filter/Carravaggio
Mask added

[jaykita]

Neve, Very good!
Here's my try, Danny. Nothing much, just buzz simp1, changed bckgr, dodge and burn tools, render clouds layer.
Warm regards, Judy.

[DannyRaphael]

Nice job, P & J, on each yours. Your uncomplicated approaches illustrate once again one does not have to go completely overboard to render very pleasing results.

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When I started out on mine I had no real destination/style/outcome in mind. It just came out kind of sketchy/charcoally/chalky.

I started by enlarging the image and knocking out the background.

The point of the attached Layers Palette screenshot is not intended this time as a roadmap, but to illustrate the path to the final outcome. I got to the "Merge Sketch" layer, went out to watch TV, came back and thought, "I don't like this as much as I thought I did."

So then I went off in another direction ("Merge Chalk Sketch", based on "Merge Sketch"), but wasn't completely sold on it, either.

Then I decided to try "a little of both," blending the two interpretations into one which was a satisfactory compromise.

Thanks, Trimoon, for sharing your image with us.

~Danny~

[Trimoon]

You are all so very welcome. I'd almost forgotten about this thread. It's good to see it back. I've seen a lot of old threads coming out of retirement. It's fund to look back and see where things and ideas came from. It's sometimes hard for me to comment on everyone's images because it is hard for me to type. I do like everything that I've seen so far and some of the ideas and directionss where this image has gone. Thank you, Danny, and all.
Steve

[SWEngineer]

Hope you like this one too, Steve. Thanks for sharing so much with us.

Painter cloning can turn 'junk' into art. I did the usual fooling around in Elements2 and got a not-very-attractive result. (First image) I used this as a clone source in Painter8 (mostly the WetOils cloner) and got pretty good results. Finished with some touchup back in Elements.

-Mark

[byRo]

This was supposed to be a high-key greyscale sketch, but I forgot to take out the colour before I ran the action.
Came out as a pleasant surprise.

Rô

[Peter S]

Found this little GEm posted way way back in time. Overdue resurrection.

First one with a little help from Lucis.
Second carried on and simplified it.
Same frame for both.

Peter

[Nanls]

some very nice images everyone. Very cute photo, thanks. Just played in photoshop and then used "just add water" brush in painter.

~Nancy~

[lkroll]

Wow Steve; what a precious little one you have there. Hope you don't mind the play. I resized (original photo too small for my taste) and did some Photo Copy (set to Value; GIMP), Grain Extract Overlay (this step gives it a soft focus feel), Retinex followed by edge detect and then Retinex again. The resulting layer set to Value (gives the dark outlines and gives the rendering a more watercolor look). Then blended in some vector simplication (yes I like cheating). Some selective smudging and voila. Here's the high quality version.