Kat Eye Studio

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My Blank Canvas

Winters in Oregon can wear on you. Depending on the year, you can have weeks upon weeks without direct sunlight. It can wear on you after a while. Through my creative explorations I’ve discovered an amazing thing this winter, though. The flat, grey skies of Oregon winter are a wonderful blank canvas, when captured with my camera. I can paint any color I want onto them!

With that in mind, I’ll share with you how I created this week’s digital painting for Paint Party Friday:

Even in the winter, there is still light

Even in the winter, there is still light

It started with this photograph. It has interesting branches but is a bit underexposed. See what I mean about the flat, grey sky? Bleah.

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Next into Snapseed, for some color shifting. I don’t even bother to try and adjust exposure before I start this process. I’ll do that later if needed. The final image out of snapseed was shifted to blue with a bit of a vignetting around the edges, creating a brighter region in the middle. Do you see it? I liked how the branches seemed to be framing this lighter spot.

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Next into a new app I got this week, PhotoCopier. This app creates some interesting color shifts and textures based on famous works of art. I liked the added texture it gave to the image, along with some more color shift.

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I wanted to add variation at this point. The sky was still too flat! I used Pixlr Express PLUS to add this inked frame. I was playing around with frames in the app earlier this week, which I almost never use, and discovered these cool watercolor-y frames. Perfect to add some more dimension here, along with a little bit of color as well.

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Time to try some more texture, pulling it into Distressed FX. This is one of my go to texture apps. I love some of the effects! The two textures I liked best shifted the color to green. If all my paintings come out green these days, it’s this app’s fault! I need to play around with shifting the colors back. Here are the two textured ones I liked:

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Looking at these I realized the Aquarell filter in Autopainter HD would go well. I like the watercolor effect of this app, it’s the best I’ve tried, but I don’t always like how it leaves such a wide unpainted border around the edges. In this case, because I had darkened the edges so much with the border, I thought it would blend really well.

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Finally, it was time to blend it all up! Using Image Blender, I blended variations of the different images I’ve shown you. Here’s the part I can never quite remember… which images, blending modes and opacities I used to get the final place. It’s a lot of experimentation. Suffice it to say that I try out all sorts of blending modes and opacities with each of the layers I’m blending to get a look that I like.

Here’s the final painting, again:

Even in the winter, there is still light

Even in the winter, there is still light

While I’ve found a great use for the grey skies this winter, can I have some sun now, please?

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Comments

  3. I haven’t gotten proficient at all the apps on my phone just yet, but give me an afternoon with textures on my computer and that’s another story!

    This one is such a great blend of textures, really lovely! As much as I love spring, I will be sad to see the bare trees go….

  4. And such lovely work you do with your blank canvas and the raw material of your original photograph. There is such depth and light.

  5. I just returned from 4 sunny days in Portland, Oregon so I know not of what you speak! But your art is lovely! HPPF!

  9. Thanks for sharing the process! It’s really beautiful. Don’t you just adore all the surprises that happen when you alter it!! Love it!

    Hugs Giggles

  11. Dear Kat, I absolutely love your grey skies of Oregon winter. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing and have a great PPF!!!

  16. Love that green sky, so gorgeous! It’s extremely dull and grey here too at the moment, and I find it totally uninspiring to take any pictures at all. Maybe I should give it a try though!

  17. I am so impressed. So many steps in your artwork and so many different apps to create that beautiful blending. Seems to me like hours of fun experimenting!

  18. It’s absolutely wonderful! THe apps really manage to capture that textured paintbrush look. I lived in Tacoma WA for 5 years growing up and, I tell ya, never in my life have I been more depressed! Could also have to do with teenage angst BS but still… there’s sthg about the weather

  20. Lovely work. We have had some sunshine and blue sky but not enough..and not today… wouldn’t it be nice if we could use an app to color the real sky blue and sunny? lol HPPF

  21. Grey skies might be a bit of a downer but your art is fabulous so maybe they aren’t too bad… love the tutorial and you make it look so easy… can’t wait to get a spare chunk of time to have ago… I have some photos that i think will be fun to play with…xx

  25. Wow! I love what you are doing with all this. I am a painter originally, and consider everything I have done since college to be “painting”…I can’t seem to help myself. I think you must be that way too.

    xoxo

    Have patience with me; I still don’t quite “get” Google+

    • I think we do have that in common! I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but I was always into drawing and painting, and later design, before photography captured me so completely. So I usually think of my work in those terms than the standard photography ones. Thanks for sharing!

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