There has been an interesting development for me lately. After months of not participating in Paint Party Friday, suddenly it’s getting difficult to decide just what to share! Now that I am considering my digital artwork to be “paintings” I find that I am creating too many to share just one day a week. Before, with traditional painting, I was doing good to pick up the brush most weeks. I think I have finally found my painting medium.
I have discovered another thing, the ones I want to share for Paint Party Friday have become the ones where I’d like to share how I created the final piece. It must be the teacher in me, but I get questions on how I did something and I can’t help but want to share with you so you can try it too. So here I go… with this week’s painting: Winter Flowers.
Winter Flowers
The painting starts off, as always for me, with a photograph. This was captured with my iPhone5 using the Slow Shutter Cam app, which allows you to mimic a long shutter speed. You can get some cool blur effects this way. Be forewarned though: You will have to experiment and take a lot of images to get one or two usable ones, but it’s worth it!
This image has some of the softness I was going for, but I wanted to enhance it further. I pulled it into the Glaze app and tried different glazes. This was my favorite:
Do you see the subtle color shifts that happened, along with the painterly edges? It seemed to deepen the shadows and make for a more dimensional image. Very cool. I didn’t like the regular looking brushstrokes that happened along the petals though. Time to pull it into the Iris Photo Studio app, and blend it back with the original photo:
This adds a little bit more structure back into the lines and brightens things up, but it didn’t get rid of the regular looking brustrokes, so there was one more step. I opened the image in Pixlr Express PLUS and applied a texture. The great thing about this app, as opposed to the similar and simpler Pixlr-o-Matic from the same company, is that you can adjust the amount of the effect that is applied. So I toned down the texture a little bit to make it more subtle. Here’s the final image again:
Winter Flowers
I am really happy with how this one turned out! I am going to print it to see how it looks on paper. I hope you are enjoying these and starting to get some ideas for creating digital art this way. The possibilities are endless, and tons of fun!
Oh, and if you don’t have a smartphone to join in with all of this app fun, I’ve run into a couple of options online to play with editing your photos this way. Check out pixlr.com and psykopaint.com. Have fun!
Oh I love psykopaint, have used it in the past when it was free a couple of years ago, and after my frustration with their point system I just went ahead and paid for it and like you have recently been experimenting with it again. It is such a time sucker, though, isn’t it…I guess like everything else. And I wonder why I have no Christmas decorations up yet?! : ) When I go back to my metals class (jewelry) this spring I’m going to be experimenting with photos on metal!!
Ooooh, how cool Kim! It will be fun to see what you come up with, combining photos with metal.
What a beautiful picture.
I’ve not got an iphone, although I think I can use my ipad mini in the same way, however I’ve not really got the hang of all the photo type functions and apps yet – maybe something to do over the Christmas break.
You can use your iPad mini this way, for sure. Download a couple of apps, and give it a try!
Amazing what you can do with photos. I love this beautiful flower and the way you captured it. Blessings, Janet PPF
Really beautiful, lovely work!
Your winter flowers painting is beautiful! I love the softness. Thanks for sharing how you created it, and for the links. Happy PPF!
Kat you are so talented and such a great teacher as well. I love this beautiful picture. It is so soft and romantic. Thank you for sharing the process.
These are so cool, they look almost like they are made of gauze…so light and airy.
What an informative post and beautiful flower. Soft as cotton. Thank you. Happy PPF!
Beautiful flowers! I am obsessed with taking pics with my iphone, so I will have to check out that app! 🙂
beautiful !
I am so happy that you have found what makes you happy and excited to create and to share. This is really beautiful work you have done.
This really does look like fun. I’ll try it with my iPad sometime! Thanks for all the info! Cool results!
Oh how gorgeous- I love your digital painting! Just beautiful!
Happy PPF,
Stephanie
Dear Kat. Your winter flowers are lovely. Thank you so much for explaining whole process of creating it. It is very useful, helpful and inspiring. Thanks as well for the photo links . You are not only great artist but great teacher too.
Beautiful! It is so graceful! Happy PPF!
beautiful! I love how it turned out!!
Great tutorial! The results are amazing. I need to make more use of my iphone, I can see now.
You have an amazing tool, right there in your hands! Let me know if you try it out!
These are so beautiful! Happy PPF!
Very beautiful and interesting to know how you have used all these different apps. Happy PPF!
great job Kat! Thanks for giving the tutorial. Are you printing these on watercolor paper? I’ll be interested to see how they print – your digital paintings are so lovely. Happy Holidays! Marji…….x
I have some textured fine art paper I would like to try, but I haven’t tried watercolor paper yet. I should try it!
thanks for the step-by-step and the recommendations on the apps. i’ve just started experimenting with digital painting but haven’t started with the photography. that’s a great idea. the results are lovely. thanks for sharing!
Wonderful tutorial and gorgeous results!
I want to play with those apps now, too! 🙂
♥♥♥
Happy PPF!!
Mary
Love your digital photos! I don’t have an iphone but do have photoshop and need to take some time to play with it.Thanks for the inspiration. Happy PPF!
Beautiful! Flowers are my favorite and the subtle colors of these are so lovely. I especially like the cropped version at the top.
Happy PPF!
It’s beautiful! I love playing with effects on photos, you can get some really creative and wonderful works of art!
Your photography is so gorgeous!! I love it. Happy PPF !
Wow – this is wonderful art. I am slightly helpless with art apps – probably because I rarely use them. I have such respect for people who can create breath-taking digital art! Happy PPF
What a beautiful image! Thanks for sharing your process!
Beautiful digital painting, thank you for sharing. its great to see the progression shots and your tutorial is very inspiring
So beautiful. It reminds me a bit of silk flowers, or some other delicate fabric. This would be great for wedding cards or announcements.
I love using apps with photos. I especially love Pixler and use that a lot. The post that I posted this week is all photographs that I’ve used with picmonkey and Pixler O-Matic.
Your flower photos are just lovely. Thanks for sharing them with us.
Beautiful Winter Flowers, Kat. And now you’ve given me a reason to NEED an iPad, not just WANT one — so I can edit my photos on that big screen! 🙂
Yes, you absolutely need an iPad Lee! I can vouch for that. It makes a big difference!