Creative Portraits: Blaine

[DannyRaphael]

This little guy's is about as cute as can be. Almost a shame to "arty-up" those eyes, but his mom wanted me to see what we could do.

Here's the orig...

~Danny~

[pstewart]

What a wonderful picture to work with!

Here's what I did with it.

1. Made abstract version, painted with white over the blotches it put on the skin areas of the face to remove them, then blended this layer in linear light mode over a dupe of original and merged.

2. On another dupe of original ran high pass filter set at 21 and blended it in color dodge mode over a dupe of the original which had been darkened and saturated more.

3. Layered step #1 result over step #2 result at 55% opacity.

Phyllis

[pstewart]

Here's a pencil sketch. This was done with the technique I've been trying to develop for "instant" sketches. It uses high pass filter, color dodge mode, and pattern adjustment layer among other things. Still experimenting so the steps aren't recorded since they kept changing as I played around with it. So...it's still far from "instant" ...not yet, anyway.

Phyllis

[JBCaffrey]

I guess I'd call this a try at a watercolor effect.

New background, Paint Daubs, Spatter, Dry Brush, Smart Blur-Edges only, Trimoon's sketch effect, and a watercolor pattern overlay.

Jim

[BillC]

Such a handsome young man! I couldn't bring myself to try one of my more 'unusual' techniques, so here he is in a somewhat softer presentation.
Bill

[jeaniesa]

BillC, that is truly beautiful! Can you tell us what you did to achieve that effect?

Thanks, Jeanie

[BillC]

Tyeise and Jeanie - thank you for the comments - I appreciate it. Actually, the technique is fairly simple. There is probably a better way to do this without making a separate copy, but this is the workflow I used:

I duplicated the picture
Converted the duplicate to a sepia tone (I used the sepia action that comes with PhotoShop in the Image Effects action set - adjusted the hue on the Hue/Saturation layer that the action creates)
Flattened
Copied back on top of original (Select/Copy/Paste - on a PC that is the sequence CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V)
Erased thru for detail and color on the eyes and lips - experiment with the amount of opacity. (Note - could probably avoid all of this by using the History Brush - wouldn't have to duplicate and do all the monkeying around with copying back onto the original)
Flattened
Gaussian Blur - to taste
Using the history brush I 'painted' back the detail in the eyes and lips
Added an oval vignette with the outside color to match the sepia tone of the pic
Done....
I'll run thru another one just to veryify the steps ....
Have a nice day
Bill

[roger_ele]

These are all wonderful

Here is my take ...

Tried this in painter first - but couldn't find a look I liked, so I figured the original might not be adjusted right to start with, so I went into Photoshop and ended up staying there ... so much for preconceived notions ...

First I vignetted, then duplicated layer and used soft light blend mode to brighten, adjusted color balance, saturation, etc., fiddled with levels a few times as I played.

darkened left side and moved catchlight in eyes

removed thin shadow from flash on camera

used smudge tool to blend to painted look

Roger

[DannyRaphael]

Another classic worth another pass...

~Danny~

[Joy_CA]

I used the following two tutorials....

Smudge Painting

Jetting min-tech

Joy (PSP8)

[Manjumena]

Basic water colour

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Manjumena

Basic water colour

How did you achieve the effect, especially the background. Was that from another image or did you craft it yourself?

[Xaran]

Duplicated background twice
Layer 1 - Line art Drawing mode, Overall tone -45, Line Intensity 1, Filter Grain
Layer 2 - inserted a Colour fill layer - light brown layer mode colour
Layer 3 - second copy of background Xero Line Art - Sketch, Tone -10, line intensity 10, monochrome. Applied layer mask painted on mask to reveal layers below.
Layer 4 - new layer filled with cream colour (lighter shade of the brown used previously) textured this layer (Trimoon's Art paper 22), mode changed to multiply, reduced opacity.

Christine

[Manjumena]

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

How did you achieve the effect, especially the background. Was that from another image or did you craft it yourself?

Its a scanned water color image in overlay mode and brushed off(layer mask) some areas in the face> flattened> colour dodge>texture.

[shariwb]

This little guy is tooo cute! I could not pass him up even though there have been so many other great renditions! I went for a watercolor look:

[Leah]

I used this as my example image for the "quick and easy Warhol effect" tutorial...

[byRo]

Couldn't resist this little guy...
Same process as here.

[jaykita]

Indeed, a beautiful little boy. Everyone has done such a lovely job.
This may be an old thread, but I couldnt resist trying. Here's my creation.

[Bonita]

This is what i want to do to photos. I bought Painter and now i see you did this wonderful work with Photoshop. I am so amazed. I have to go over all these tutorials. I am in love with this site.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Bonita

This is what i want to do to photos. I bought Painter and now i see you did this wonderful work with Photoshop. I am so amazed. I have to go over all these tutorials. I am in love with this site.

Hello and welcome, Bonita:

Do you also have Photoshop or Elements or ??? Do big deal one way or the other. Painter is a very feature rich program and has a lot of capabilities similar to Photoshop and in some ways runs circles around Photoshop.

Some folks (like me) use a combination of Photoshop and Painter.

Did you get Painter 9.0 (IX)? If you've not used Painter before I can highly recommend the Painter offerings at http://www.EclecticAcademy.com. The classes are excellent and very reasonably priced.

If ever I can be of assistance, don't hesitate to ask via forum post, e-mail or private message, OK? (click my name at the top of any post to get the e-mail or pm options)

Glad you found us.

~Danny~

[Bonita]

I will take you up on that help!!! Yes i have Photoshop CS and I know my way around pretty good. The Painter 8 I purchased about a month ago. I have read and watched most of the tutorials on the internet. I want to do portraits for our photography business. I of course love to do this. My problem right now is the face. I tend to want to smudge it too much. I get the darks on the light and cant seem to get it back to where i should have it. I need help with the face. Just the little bit i got to read the forum yesterday, I felt i improved. It seems everyone wants to do outlandish stuff, monsters and weird stuff on most of the paint forums. I just want to get good at painting portraits. The ones in this thread are the exact art i want to produce. I love the little boy. I think the face is my biggest problem. I want it to look painted but still look like a china doll. I will be stopping by and subscribing to this forum. I am a sponge for this information. Thanks for being so nice. I immediately felt this was people who were willing to help.

[Neve]

Auto Cols, B&C,Hue & Sat etc.
Neat Image/Noise
duped layer
L2 - Dodge 100% - desat/Merged layers
Duped layer
L2 - Paint Alchemy/Sketch/Soft Light
Merged layers.

[DannyRaphael]

Originally Posted by Neve

Auto Cols, B&C,Hue & Sat etc.
Neat Image/Noise
duped layer
L2 - Dodge 100% - desat/Merged layers
Duped layer
L2 - Paint Alchemy/Sketch/Soft Light
Merged layers.

Very cute. The foto holders really add a nice touch. How did you do them?

BTW Blaine turned five years old a couple weeks ago. My son went to the "bowling"/pizza party. It was a hoot.

~Danny~

[Neve]

That's what I like to hear .....kids having fun. My grandsons (2 x 9 year olds) enjoyed the same treat for their birthdays too this year, great fun isn't it?! The tabs are one of the preloaded picture frames with PSP. Thanks for posting the photo, he's a handsome wee laddie.