Painting w/photo as Template

[Blacknight]

CRICKET got me to thinking of photos as templates, and so I thought I'd post this and see what you guys can come up with for it.

The original is here. It is very poor quality to begin with, but will make a good template.

How pretty can this ugly duckling become? WE have the power! Transform it!

[Blacknight]

I copied the original, opened a new document 8 x 10, 300 dpi, and pasted. Then I transformed it to fit the new size, grabbed a wet watercolor brush and started painting over it on a new layer.

Went over it afterwards with the smear tool to blend it, and tweaked it with hue/sat using the individual colors instead of MASTER. Resized and resampled to smaller document to fit the 100k limit here. Sharpened using KPT Equalizer in equalizer mode.

[Andrew B.]

Looks good to me!

And if I'm understanding correctly, you didn't clone or history brush from the photo onto a new layer, you used the photo as a guide for where to apply your paint strokes. Right?

[Blacknight]

I used the eyedropper to pick some colors from the original - all else was "tracing" with a watercolor brush and smearing with the smear tool.

[Andrew B.]

The template and eyedropper idea is great, but I think most of the credit goes to the way you brushed in the strokes. And that's where the art and the eye come in.

BTW, I thought of a variation on this awhile back, but I have not had the time to try it. But maybe someone else would like to. It adds the extra feature of running an outline effect on your picture. Then using this sort of like a coloring book. The outlines could be on a transparent layer above the painting surface, or below it. And the original would be under this and turned on and off as needed for reference.

The reason I thought of this is I have trouble stroking over a picture. I cannot see my strokes well enough against the picture.