Being an Artist

by Terri

I always wanted to be an artist. My mother is a wonderful artist and I hoped it would be inherited, but no such luck. I can barely draw a stick figure. I can remember watching her with her chalks and watercolors, the pictures appearing as if by magic on the paper. The one above is one of several of hers that I have hanging in my home and I treasure them.

My photography is my art and I love it but a while back I discovered that I COULD be an artist, not with paper and paint but with a camera and Photoshop. I had taken a photo of a cactus in bloom with huge white flowers and I was searching the internet for the name of it. In my search, I came upon a gallery of a photographer who shoots a lot in my part of the country and he had taken a photo of this same cactus. On his website, he had a section called Photo Paintings.  Clicking on that link opened up a whole new world for me.  I e-mailed him to ask him how he had created this type of artistic work with his photographs. He wasn’t particularly helpful, saying only that he used filters in Photoshop.  So I decided to give it a try. Here is the first attempt, the before and the after:

Unfortunately I didn’t keep track of what I did, so I couldn’t recreate it on another photo.  But I definitely knew I wanted to know more, so my researching began and I learned ways to apply the filters so that I could recreate the results.

The filters that I use the most are in the Filter menu under Artistic. I love Dry Brush and Watercolor. If you are applying them to a full-sized image, it can sometimes take several layers of the filter to get the effect you want but you have a lot more control over the end result. I make sure to use a duplicate copy of my image so I always have my original to go back to.  Here is another before and after sample, where I do know the steps I took:

All I did with this one was apply two layers of Dry Brush.  Here's another one that has a few more filter layers:

On this particular image, I applied the Dry Brush three times, then the Watercolor, then Poster Edges and then, for good measure, a final layer of Dry Brush. Those are the three that I use most often, but definitely play around with the others to find your own favorites.

Convert your image to a Smart Object first. That way each filter layer will be on a separate layer and you can turn them on and off until you get the result you’re looking for. If you haven't used Smart Objects, look up how to use them for either Photoshop or Elements. You will be happy you did!

And just so you know, this technique can be used on other things besides flowers. I just happen to shoot a lot of flowers but try it on landscape shots, shots of the ocean, etc. 

Have you ever wished you were an artist?  Maybe you can be. I hope you take some time to play around with this and have some fun and please post if you have any questions. I would love to see some samples of your converted shots in the Flickr gallery!  

 
Popping back in here to say that I created this post before reading Dotti's post yesterday about diptychs, but the photos in my post are another example of diptychs -- before and afters!