Richard Alexander Hall

Archive for October, 2011

[Update: I've revised this painting. Twice. Except.. I miss some of the more raw impressionist effects of the second revision.. may clear out the excess detail of the third revision..]

I’m in love.

For reference and history, the first version of the painting is here. The second version is here.

How I made this:

1. iPhone4 taking a picture in HDR mode (I think?).
2. Photoshop CS5 transplanting street and construction objects in original photo with turf/leaves/trees/mountain backdrops via “content-aware fill” (which is amazing – have a look here.)
3. Painter 12 “Auto-paint” feature running batches of various brushing paramaters I fed it, to make an overlay to my own hand-painted work: digital watercolor cloning (of the photo), and oil cloning of a broad, messier under-painting (from the photo).
4. Photoshop again, to mix layers: layer 1 is oil under-painting, layer 2 is watercolor layer in color dodge layer blend mode, layer 3 is auto-paint batches at 60 percent transparency.

So this is mixed digital media in three layers: a lower layer of oil, a middle layer of watercolor, and another top layer of oil. But it’s like all the light in the watercolor dodged everything in the oil beneath it (which you cannot do in real life), and on top of all that is more oil, mixed as viscous material but very translucent (maybe you could do that with a thinning agent? I don’t know real oil painting).

[Update: now it's multiple layers of multiple types of media, multi-layers themselves combined in stages using clipping masks in Photoshop; and additionally including digital colored pencil.]

If you’re also in love with it, you may buy a print with a variety of options.