Category Archive

From a photograph taken to send to her six sons, all of whom were far away

in Canada, the Pacific, when she was in her fifties I have tried to imagine how this lively woman must have looked when she first left London to live in a rural village. My WACOM is still not behaving quite as I would like but I did find the practice worth doing.

By several requests, here is the digital painting tutorial for “Pushing Color” using a digital painting software program of your choice for painting brush strokes and then using Adobe Photoshop or Element to push the colors with the “Liquify Filter”. It gives more dimension, texture and depth to your digital painting.

Download the following sketch to work with in this tutorial — right click your mouse and save to your computer

(Image above) To create your own “pushing color” technique, start with a sketch or drawing of an image. For the tutorial, we’ll use the image above that you can right click your mouse to save on your computer. Once you save it, open it in the software program you prefer best for digital painting. I like to use Corel Painter X because this program has the widest variety of brushes.

In Step Two (image above), select the brush and colors you want to use for your painting. I used Corel Painter X Oil Pastel, Variable Oil 30. For colors, I chose a soft pink hue for the background, deep violet purple, lavender, and bright purple for the center of the flower that I simply stroked without worrying too much about where the color was bleeding. Then, I used three shades of yellow from soft to bright for the outer edge. I added a white and pink edged tip for the petal on the left. I also feathered the edges of the purple center of the petals for a natural appearance.

In Step Three (image above), I added a few muted shades of plum in with the soft pink at the bottom right corner. I also added soft yellow tip to the largest petal.

Step Four (image above), I saved the file and re-opened in Adobe Photoshop CS2 in order to use the first ”Liquify” filter in Adobe Photoshop, which you find by selecting “Filter” and scrolling then selecting “Liquify”. If you use Adobe Elements, I believe you have to select “Filter” then “Distort” and then “Liquify”.  

For the first filter, I use the warp tool and push the color from the outside into the center to create distinct movement and lines.

Here’s a quick look at the other tools available in Liquify:

• Warp  Pushes pixels forward as you drag.
• Reconstruct  Fully or partially reverses the changes you’ve made.
• Twirl Clockwise  Rotates pixels clockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Pucker Tool  Moves pixels toward the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Bloat  Moves pixels away from the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Push Tool  Moves pixels perpendicularly to the stroke direction. Drag to move pixels to the left, and Alt-drag to move pixels to the right.
• Mirror Tool  Copies pixels to the brush area. Drag to reflect the area perpendicular to the direction of the stroke (to the left of or below the stroke). Alt-drag to reflect the area in the direction opposite to that of the stroke (for example, the area above a downward stroke). Use overlapping strokes to create an effect similar to a reflection in water.
• Turbulence  Smoothly scrambles pixels and creates fire, clouds, waves, and similar effects. To adjust the smoothness, drag the Turbulent Jitter pop-up slider in the Tool Options section, or enter a value between 1 and 100 in the text box. Higher values increase smoothness.

   

In Step Five (image above), while still in Adobe Photoshop, I select “Filter” and then choose “Artistic” and “Watercolor” to add depth. (You may not see the difference until you do it in your own painting or download this image and enlarge it to see the texture added.   

Step Six (image above), I added various shades of green brush strokes around the upper right corner. I added deeper orange color near the tip of a couple of the petals. Next, I selected “Filter” and “Liquify” again using the clockwise tool to create an interesting center, pushed more color in different directions within the flower.

(image above) To complete this simple painting for the tutorial, I saved the file and re-opened in Corel PhotoPaint in order to add my infamous dots, a raindrop element in the far left and the smudge tool to soften some of the edges.

(image above) Same final painting — however, changed the “Hue” to darken the color to show more blue purple instead of violet. I show this so you can see that you can alter an image just by working with “Adjustments”.

I was playing with the watercolors and the salt eraser in Painter, and then decided to paste the negative of an image traced from one of this past autumn’s raven photos, and came up with this. I though he was kind of fun!

-She Wolf(c)2008

Tanno - a small portrait

-She Wolf (c)2008

The first time I did a picture of a snail shell was several months ago. Now that I have had some practice with the wacom tablet and Corel Painter X, I decided to have another try. I like the way the oils work.

Here is my first attempt at digital watercolor.  I don’t have Corel but I do have Photoshop.  Photoshop is far inferior to Corel in terms of painting, but I managed to figure out the Photoshop brushes based upon Genece’s excellent instructions for Corel.  I think I might get the hang of this eventually.

 Lori Gloyd (c) 2007

Our Ruby sets off

in the early morn

to find her future

or

Fran thinks a new motor bike

Wide space

where the fence reaches the horizon

place of my leaving

greens in my lonely room

on dark nights

Fran

Next week, I will be starting a 30 day digital painting tutorial for anyone interested in learning how to paint using Corel Painter X and Adobe Photoshop (both programs have free trials you can download right before we start the 30 day program). If you use a Wacom tablet, great! If not, I’ll give instructions for mouse users as well. All you have to do to participate is download the daily image lesson and come to The Digital Atelier where I’ll be posting the tutorial daily lesson.

Also, I’ve been working on a painting the past few days giving people an opportunity to see the evolution. If you’ve missed seeing the digital painting in progress on my daily blog (http://sanctuaryofstillness.wordpress.com), here’s the evolution up to day four of the painting.

Here are our Soul Fooders, each in her place

reaching each other

through the days, the years

forgiving and friendly

for here is our space

I love digital painting–each stroke of color, using different brushes & techniques, and the click on my Intuous pen! It’s not just a passion. I’ve turned it into my career as an artist showing in galleries. After having the art generated onto museum quality canvas, each painting is hand embellished using oils & acrylics to give added texture and color. Combining digital and traditional painting is a joyful experience. If you haven’t ever tried it, you’ll find it to be quite rewarding on many levels.

Dream Butterfly Dance

                                                                Jan

She Wolf brought a monster home to Riverleigh.

She claimed he followed her.

I think he knew how to make the best of himself

and

as he has promised to be

an exceptionally well behaved

if somewhat slimy

little monster

I have found a pool just a few feet from the Gazebo

under the big chestnut tree

and invited him to stay

provided, of course, that his mistress looks after him

and does not expect me to find his food. Fran

She Wolf gave us a story of the strange mushrooms

that attacked her deep in the forest on her way to Dwamish Bay

Here is my version, vision, as the story came to be in this strange place.  Fran

The Dancers
dance for the years
we have spent with our blogs
our friends in the town
and the city of cyber
We’ve shared
and we’ve travelled
we’ve learned
and we’ll wonder
at all of the pieces we’ve found
in the corners
and the garden
in the rooms
and the travels
For we are Heather’s bloggers

Earthquake in Dwamish

the old ferry woman

takes her trembling passengers

to safety

Her old pipe  a comfort

in any circumstance

Remembering Mrs. Murphy’s cow

I tremble

I thank Quin for the story.  Fran

I laughed so very hard when I read Quin’s story of the blue bird rescue
that I tried to draw it . I was not quite sure of the brand of the helmet so included a sample that was better than My Limitations could do! Here is the effort. Fran

Cronelogical waits at her easel
trying to recall her elven past
watching her puppets
wondering if anyone at Riversleigh
will come by for a chat
and hoping that someone
will be you

For Jane, as her trip came to me. Fran

Once in a while
the pain’s intensity
overcomes her
she weeps until the moment
she remembers
your face

Welcome home, what a special place to holiday. Fran

On mornings in winter
too cold for the horses
we walked to our school house
two miles made longer by having to climb snow banks
Our parkas were made by our mother out of stout canvas, the hoods fur-lined
to keep the bitter wind from our faces
Our daffodils did not dare come out before the 24th of May.

Jan

Here is something I created today and I think it is representative of the word Simplicity. But interestingly enough, the more I look at it, the more complexity I see, but only because of my own perceptions, not necessarily because the image has suddenly become complex.

This was created in Corel Painter using the Look Selector.

Jan

It takes so many hours to get a painting working in this medium
but I do hope my efforts share some of that practice. Fran

Jan

Jan

Jan

Program used - Serif DrawPlus 4.0

                                                                                                       Jan   

  I created this using Serif DrawPlus 4.0 which is a graphics program that is no longer produced. I bought it in a pack last year when I thought my nephew was going to study Grapic Design at University. In order to have more effects to play with I posted it into My Pictures and then re - opened it with Microsoft Photo Editor.  I wanted to cover all bases so I went back to My Picture and opened it with Paint which is a basic program on Microsoft and then I tried Serif PhotoPlus 6.5 and Serif Photo Manager 1.0. I was incredibly lucky when I bought the Serif package because there were five discs in the pack for approximately $10 US dollars.  There is probably an easier way to do all this but I was delighted to have worked out a way that enabled me to use all the tools and effects.

Here is the process by which I created “Woman in Blue Shirt”.  I made it in Photoshop, but I believe that the same principles will work in other graphics programs.

First, I created a new layer and blocked out the image using shapes.

Next, I created another layer over the shapes.  I used the brush tool with a 5 pixel tip and painted in the outline of the image.  I created another layer behind these first two layers and filled it with a green background.  Then I deleted the shapes layers.

I created another layer and named it “Eye” (Rename a layer by double-clicking it and typing in the name).  Then I zoomed in and painted one eye, then copied the eye layer and flipped it with the Transform function (Edit>Transform>Vertical Flip) and adjusted the placement. 

Next, I created separate layers for the lips and nose.  I painted half the nose and then duplicated that layer and merged the two sides of the nose.   By doing this I got a symetrical nose.  I painted the lips on the Lips layer.   Note:  in all of the detail work for the eyes, nose, and lips, I selected different size brush tips and various colors.  I used the Smudge tool with an Airbrush tip to blend the colors.

I merged the eyes, lips, and nose layers with the face layer, then picked a larger brush tip and applied various colors.  I used the Airbrush smudge tool to blend the colors.

I made separate layers for the shirt and the hair and applied the appropriate colors and blendings.  

Finally, I zoomed out, made some final adjustments to the hair, face, clothing and background, added a texturizing filter to the blue shirt to make the “weave”,  merged all the layers, and  then cropped the image.  Here is the finished product:

Image and tutorial by Lori Gloyd (c) 2007

In the space before waking
she saw
the eyes upon her
knowing
and knowing she could never know
the place beyond Fran Read the rest of this entry »

Woman, Sideview

Digital Sketch

Lori Gloyd (c) 2007

This started out as a simple sketch with a stylus straight into the application with no help from another image.    It’s been awhile since I’ve actually drawn on a wacom tablet and I was just fooling around.  Then I started to apply the color using soft brushes and air brushes.  I still need to perfect hair (I have trouble with hair in traditional media too), but I am pleased with the other details.

I am following tutorials in drawing gleaned from google. If only features were as easy as hats!Fran

“Indigo Waters”

I created a “sketch” of the mountain and moon in Terragen to block out the image. Then I applied layer after layer of “paint” to create the waterfall, mist, clouds, and shrubbery using a wacom and stylus.

Monika’s e-mail label, “Indigo Moon” inspired this piece.

Lori Gloyd (c) 2007