In this piece we started with a regular photograph (far left) in photoshop. Retouching blemishes, blurring skin, darkening and lightening hot spots (middle).
Next we take the touched up photo to painter and start cloning, i used oil cloners mostly, i left a brush stroke look on the outside to eliminate the background distractions. I wasn’t totally satisfied with some details so i took the final painter image back into photoshop, and put the (middle shot) as a layer on top. I masked in certain areas around the mouth, eyes and nose i wanted to be photographic crisp. I finished off by cleaning the reflections on the eyes.

Here is the same case study, new fruit and new application. This digital painting was done using the photograph in the top left. This time i used only photoshop, and it’s brushes.
I accidentally flattened the initial sketch sorry!
Then you can see i blocked in the basic colours with a size size 60 brush at about 60% opacity 100% hardness. The file size was 8″x8″ 300dpi.

After i lowered the brush opacity to 20% to blend the colours and often used a smaller size 30 brush, still 100% hardness. Keep sampling the blended overlapping colours and brush till you are get a nice gradient.

For a finishing touch i applied a texture to the brush to get a fuzzy, spotted look on some highlights. I never used any blur, smudge, dodge or burn tools at all.

Trying to get back into corel painter this year, I thoroughly enjoyed the lessons i got from my design courses years ago. I came across a website that inspired me to try what they were doing. LINK. Yes i know its photoshop based, but idea is the same. I will have to try photoshop next.
For the final details i imported the apple to photoshop to clean up the shadows,  was having a hard time getting it smooth and feathered.

The photograph was just for records sake, as you can see the angle and lighting are off. I painted from still life.

Advanced photoshop competition for the website worth1000.com
It had been awhile since i submitted anything and i had some free time.
This topic was about making those elusive bigfoot evidence photo’s you always see, but this time its real!
Any fictitious monster you like, but it must have been been claimed to be real at some point in history.
I choose dragons. I took an everyday sky shot i found from my own personal collection and started by enhancing the clouds. I dropped in a black silhouette of a flying dragon and toyed with layer styles, visibility and blur until i got a desired look. I masked out the part where the sky was showing. Then using the same mask, filled in those areas with dragon skin i borrowed from lizards/ alligators and bats.
The result was a dragon that was trying to stay out of sight in the clouds, but when the sun hit down, it exposed his terrifying shadow in the clouds.

I built this website from the bottom up, all the pictures were supplied by the cottage owners. Some of the shots required a little tidying up as the cottage was not yet finished.

It was to have a feeling of class and comfort, and still maintain all the information for prospective renters.
I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend there, and it is more than words or pictures can describe.

www.pinewoods.ca

Worth1000.com is a website that offers users to participate in competitions against one another. In one contest the goal was to make a something invisible. It’s best to choose an image that creates a funny or interesting result by the removal of an object.
Here was my submission.

I found the backpack especially difficult, as there wasn’t much existing material to work with. Anything the head covered had to be recreated. After a lot of cloning, and touching up i was happy with the result.