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I have had a couple of requests for more info about my painting process so here is the second installment.
In recent years I have been painting from photos so let's go with that. First I take a lot of pictures with my little Canon Elf. The latest group that I am working on were taken from the car window as I rode around Philadelphia because we were caught in a traffic jam on the river drive. I took the pictures when we stopped for a light or stop sign, somewhat at random.
The first shot is one of these. I think I was aiming at the shadows on the wall but got the bonus of the boy with trash.
I downloaded the photo into my computer and opened it in Photoshop. The first thing I wanted to do was straighten out the buildings. I used "filter" and then "distort" for this. Next I moved in and eliminated some of the building and moved the boy forward in a complicated combination of "copy, cut, paste, erase and move" for the boy and then "copy and image size ( in edit )" for the background of the boy.
Why did I want to move him forward? Not sure, just did. It was something about the combination of shapes and the way he was heading into the blue green area. Then I wanted a little more atmosphere so I adjusted the light situation with "Filter, Render, Light Affects, omni." This was a little too light on the right but I knew I could adjust that when painting and I liked the feeling. However it was much too much information for the 9" x 12" canvas I had ready to go. It should be a larger painting. Tomorrow next version.
In recent years I have been painting from photos so let's go with that. First I take a lot of pictures with my little Canon Elf. The latest group that I am working on were taken from the car window as I rode around Philadelphia because we were caught in a traffic jam on the river drive. I took the pictures when we stopped for a light or stop sign, somewhat at random.
The first shot is one of these. I think I was aiming at the shadows on the wall but got the bonus of the boy with trash.
I downloaded the photo into my computer and opened it in Photoshop. The first thing I wanted to do was straighten out the buildings. I used "filter" and then "distort" for this. Next I moved in and eliminated some of the building and moved the boy forward in a complicated combination of "copy, cut, paste, erase and move" for the boy and then "copy and image size ( in edit )" for the background of the boy.
Why did I want to move him forward? Not sure, just did. It was something about the combination of shapes and the way he was heading into the blue green area. Then I wanted a little more atmosphere so I adjusted the light situation with "Filter, Render, Light Affects, omni." This was a little too light on the right but I knew I could adjust that when painting and I liked the feeling. However it was much too much information for the 9" x 12" canvas I had ready to go. It should be a larger painting. Tomorrow next version.
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| Adjusted buildings, moved boy forward, cut out extra stuff. |
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| Light adjustment. |
