Lotus Blossom

[Snoleoprd]

Hi all,


Here is a pic of a lotus blossom taken at Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles, which if you have ever been there is not the safest place in the world to go, but when the lotus are blooming, the lake is amazing. I have always liked this image because of its simplicity, I hope you like it too. I am really interested to see what all the talented people here can come up with, using this image.

Enjoy,

Alan

[Guest]

Painting Method

Such beautiful flowers these are...I have never seen a lotus.

I used the same basic technique I used yesterday to paint Lynda Logan's Hope in this same forum.

1. Some color adjustments and layer blending etc. to get a revised picture that had more contrast and more color variety.

2. KPT pyramid paint followed by faint paint daubs and faded spatter.

3. Duped then darkened and increased contrast with a levels adjustment on the new bottom layer.

4. Put a layer mask on the top layer, filled with black, and painted over with varying opacities of white with a big scattering brush (leaves or crystals etc...forget which pattern this time). This blended the light and dark in a blotchy pattern to simulate brush strokes.

5. After merging these layers I finished by adding a pattern adjustment layer using the confetti pattern. Last time I'd used a similar one, the crystals pattern. They are very similar patterns but the latter is orderly in diagonal rows where the former is random.

I also used a "stone" pattern layer as well along the way, to get a rough paper texture.

Phyllis

[angue]

What great opportunity to try Cricket's Watercolor Technique.
Since the background is not distracting I didn't do anything to it.
I do not have a scanner, so I masked the flower out. I "paint bucket" filled the background with a light olive color. Using history brush tool with the dynamics turned on and watercolor#2 & 4, I put back some of the dark green color. Also by varying the blend mode (Screen, overlay, darken) on the brush tool options I was able to get different shades of green.
I also used some smudge tool on the flower with very low opacity.

Cricket's tutorial can be found here :

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4805

Tony

[angue]

I finally found my Painter 6. I am just beginning again to learn this program after seeing Jack's (JAZ) contribution here in Photo-Based-Art. Jack's work convinced me to give this program another chance.
Anyway, as Jack says, it is easier to produce photo-based art in Painter than in Photoshop.
First I cloned the picture. Then Select all and filled with white-ish fill color. Deselected then turned on the tracing paper. With the tracing paper on you can see the image underneath the white fill.
Checking on clone color I used heavy chalk on the flower and coarse airbrush on the background. Saved it in jpg. I applied the texture in PS7 using rough pastel art filter.
It took me three hours to get to this but I think it's worth it.

Tony

[retpmikl]

Here's my try...

and a bit of 'verbiage'.

First, I've made two copies of the bg layer cause I knew I wanted to work on the green bg and the flower separately.

A=green bg only B=flower only

Then, I've separated the flower from the green background with the Magic wand and the lasso and saved the selection. With the selection, I've isolated the flower and the green bg each on their respective layer.

On the green layer, first I add an adj. layer (A1=Hue/Saturation) and pushed the Hue +36 to have a bit more blue color. I then Grouped it with A.

On A, I used Filter/Artistic/Colored Pencil (5, 15, 25), after having added noise (9,27, Gaussian). [Thanks Danny for the trick.] I then used the Smudge tool (about 60, Normal, Strength ± 30) folowing the direction of the pencil lines.

For the flower:
First, I added an adj. layer B1= Level (0, 0.95, 216) to get brighter colors and grouped it with B.

On B, I've worked with the Smudge tool, varying the diameter and working with Normal, Lighten and darken, about 16-34 %.

On top of all that, I've put an adj. layer C=Brightness/Contrast (+24, +30)

That's about it, I think.

[Blacknight]

Lotus - isn't that what Jeaniesa has for an avatar?

Anyway, I inverted, Eye Candy Antimatter, and inverted again. Set the blend mode to Linear Light and put a KPT5 fractal behind it. Painted in black on the background using the flower as a guide to darken the flower color. The quote is from a cross stitch pillow my mother has.

[Blacknight]

This is just two layers, antimatter on the top, and lots of hue/sat and blend mode experimenting. Texturizer filter with watercolor paper, inverted. KPT Equalizer as a final step - it made it "glow" a bit, and I thought that was a good effect.

[retpmikl]

Version 2

A retouch version of my earlier one (is it obvious that I like those practices?)

I've added a Filter/Paint Daubs (3,2,Sparkle) faded at 40% to a copy of the green layer + Blend Mode=Overlay).

And a Filter/Dry Brush (1,10,3) to the flower layer (+min. corrections with the History Brush).

Oh ya, and I've put up the Brightness/Contrast adj. layer to +24, +30.

Too bad it's already over... Going back to work tomorrow. I had a real good time. Thanks all folks.

[retpmikl]

My last one.

Done with Project Dogwaffle, a free paint program that might give some fun when you don't have a 'big' painting program.

http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?download=1&ID=1472

[palms]

Re: Lotus Blossom

A watercolour attempt

Palms

[palms]

Re: Lotus Blossom

Another couple from me, love the simplicity of this flower

Palms

[GerryB]

Re: Lotus Blossom

A glowing flower:

[Craig Walters]

Re: Lotus Blossom

i like the double framing there, gerry.

ok, no filter forge filter this time. just a little whimsy.

[saby]

Re: Lotus Blossom

Hi Alan,

this is a very nice picture, i like it.

cropped the image
made masks from chanells R G B
screen and multiply layers used to change contrast masked by the 3 masks
lens flair effect on an overlay layer gave the lights

saby

[Peter S]

Re: Lotus Blossom

I was just trying to keep this simple.


Peter