Summer Oak (A Mobile Tutorial)

I feel as if something has broken free inside, and I can create new work again. I’m not sure why… Maybe it’s getting through the drought of July, or maybe it’s completing the materials for my Smartphone Art workshop next weekend. Maybe it’s settling in to my new job at work, or maybe it’s playing with some new apps. Whatever the reason, it feels like some sort of release or relief — and I’m creating again.

My attention has turned back to the trees in recent days. In spite of the leaves, I find myself entranced with them. I feel like I’m learning to see them with their leaves, or maybe through their leaves. I look to see the real tree inside.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a mobile tutorial, so I thought today I would step you through the creation of this image, Summer Oak. Captured last week on a hike, I edited it this weekend and liked how it conveys both the delicacy and strength of the tree. Isn’t that the essence of a tree? A fleeting, transitory crown of leaves, but a strong core that survives.

*Sigh.* I love trees.

OK, enough tree philosophy for one day… On to the edit! We start with original image, captured using ProCamera and exposed for the sky. The tree and leaves end up in silhouette.

The first step is using Snapseed. I converted to black and white and increased brightness. I wanted to pull out the dimension in the trunk, and allow the leaves to blend into the sky a bit, giving that ephemeral quality to them.

Next, I played with the black and white version in Distressed FX. This first output becomes the base of the edited image.

This second Distressed FX version is used to blend with the first…

… and here is the output after blending in Image Blender. Along with the subtle texture, I like how the color shifts from a strong gold to a warm tan.

Side Note: My apologies, I don’t ever remember my blending modes a day or two later! I barely remember them 15 minutes later. Because of that, my smartphone art ends up being a truly unique creation in the moment, which is part of what I love about it. So you’ll have to live without the detail of blending modes, and experiment for yourself!

Next, I took the original gold output from Distressed FX and ran it through Autopainter II chalk filter.

This was then blended with the image-in-progress. It’s a very subtle blend. I was not looking to eliminate the photographic nature of the image, but to add some depth of color.

Next is an edit of the black and white version in Portray. You can create some wonderful looks in this app, like this delicate ink.

The portray output was blended onto the image-in-progress. I wanted to use the Portray version to make the original more soft and subtle, but I couldn’t get the right blend. Here’s and intermediate blend which was saved…

…and then blended back onto the version three images above. This was what I was going for with the original Portray blend. Sometimes you have to take a couple of intermediate steps to get the effect you want.

Here’s where a new app comes in! I’ve been playing with SketchMee, an app that creates pencil drawing effects. There are a lot of control settings with this app so it’s fun to play with the different variations and see where it might take your image. This app slightly resizes the image, to give it the edgy border you can see.

I discovered a cool effect from the resized SketchMee image when you get into blending: double exposure. I played around with the sizing further using the Arrange function in Image Blender, to get the double exposure effect that worked best. This was the last step, so here’s the final Summer Oak image again:

Summer, tree, art… it’s all good, isn’t it?