Another lesson from Susan's Book

 

Pasture Land, Digital Art

This is from project 4 in Susan Tuttle's new book, Digital Expressions, which is about overlaying texture. For this lesson, she included the photo of the pier and the texture photo on the CD that comes with the book. Isn't that fun? Below is my attempt to get an image like hers in the book.

My Project 4 Practice with Susan's image, texture, and design.

 This is hers:

 

So then I tried one of my own pictures and my own texture photo. That is the one above, Pasture Land,  that I opened this post with.

Let me show you how I did mine.

Pasture, Original Photo

I started with a photo I took with my Olymus Camedia c-4000. This scene is on Veterens Memorial Drive in Huntsville, TX.

I used a scan of some of my turp paper to blend with this photo.

Moonrise, Turp Paper

The pasture photo was the background layer and when I used the MOVE tool to drag the turp paper into the working document, it became layer 1. BUT . . . before I drug it in, I resized it.

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PHOTOSHOP TIP: When you want an image to be the exact size of a background image, you can select the second image by clicking anywhere on it. Do this before you drag it into your working document. Go to IMAGE>IMAGE SIZE and when the pop up box comes up, go to the WINDOW menu and click on the document that you want the size to be. Click ok and the image will be the exact size of the document you selected in the WINDOW command.

For example: For these two photos, I opened the pasture photo and then the turp photo. Before I drug the turp photo over to the pasture one and while it was still active, I went to the IMAGE menu and selected IMAGE SIZE. Immediately I went up to the WINDOW menu and clicked on the name of the pasture photo. When I went back and clicked "OK" in the IMAGE SIZE window, the turp image took the exact demensions of the pasture photo. Presto!

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When I had the turp paper image and the pasture image in the same document and lined up together, I was ready to try blending styles. With the turp paper layer highlighted (just click on that layer in the layers palette if it isn't already highlighted), I selected several different blending modes until I settled on SOFT LIGHT at about a 70% opacity. Then I opened a mask and used a soft brush and black color to mask out some of the turp paper lines that were on top of the trees.

I merged the two layers, cropped it, and tweaked the image with the HUE/SATURATION menu to make the colors and intensity like I wanted them.

Pasture Land, B&W

Naturally, I had to play some more. I put the image in B&W tones (above) and then in sepia tones (below) I surely am having a good time with Susan's book! [You know to click on any image in this post to see a larger copy.] When I open the larger copies, I think I like the black and white one best.

 

At the end of each lesson in Susan's book is a piece of artwork from a guest artist using the same techniques as are in the lesson. When I reached the end of lesson 4, I was blown away to find this piece by Chrysti Hydeck:

Whispers of Time by Chrysti Hydeck

in Susan Tuttle's book, Digital Expressions

Chrysti's photo grabbed me because it reminded me of the one I did in January and later posted about it here.

Tree Festival, Digital manipulation

I used a piece of my handmade paper as a layer to blend with the sky.

This digital art is so addictive . . . I highly recommend t -- it's better for ya than other addictive substances. LOL. Ya can't get in much trouble sitting at the computer doing art.

Comments

[Cheryl Dolby]

Your digital art is coming along very nicely. I haven't gotten involved in that yet and I hope I don't since I know it will be very time consuming.

I want to thank you for the tutorials on Never Dull. I like your style of teaching.

[mar]

LOVE her book and lessons
she helped this click for me !!!..for which i am very thankful
you have done amazing things too!!!
good job

[Sally Turlington]

Thanks, Cheryl and Mary. Yeah, thanks to DJ Pettitt, Susan Tuttle, and Marie Otero my digital skills are growing and I am totally consumed by doing manipulations. LOL.

[Sallyt]

Thanks so much, Mar I loved her class.