Retouch Pro

Photo Art - Challenge #3

What I Did

I'd like to first say that I appreciate this challenge. I had never seen any of Kincade's work and found that I loved his work almost as much of Ben Hampton's. I got a bit carried away and spent too much time on it...but I was having fun and it was my time. After finishing it, I was wishing I lived there.

• My first thought was that the "cottage" needed to be moved into the background a bit to allow for more grassy area in front of cottage... I didn't think a cottage would be situated quite that close to the water. I had also noticed that most of his work showed the sky in the background. I made new image with transparent background of 900 X 1110, then copied picture onto it as new layer.
• Noticing that I'd seen no people on his paintings, I cloned out man.
• Using the Freehand selector I drew a rough line across the grassy area in front of the cottage and around the top portion of the picture. I copied this portion and pasted as new layer then deleted selection on first layer. I then repositioned the 2 layers to give me space to add grass or whatever between cottage & water. Merged these two layers.
• On transparent layer I selected the top portion and flood filled with a gradient of 2 light blues for sky
• Going to the picture level I erased some of the background trees to let more sky show through.
• I then did added another layer between picture an sky background and added the mountains at low opacity . They weren't hazy enough to suit me so I airbrushed with white on low opacity.
• I used blurred trees and used Retouch tool (soften & light RGB to get trees more to my liking
• Using clone tool I cloned in some grass in vacant area. Then got carried away and started taking artistic (LOL) liberties with picture adding more rock walls, well, steps and stepping stones
• I worked on the roof and couldn't get it to my liking...so taking the easy way out I selected a roof on one of his pictures and copied it onto my picture, resizing and cloning as needed.
• Again taking artistic license I decided to enlarge the cottage at the back and to add a covered entry.
• Chimney with smoke was also added.
• For door and windows, using selection tool I drew in squares, rectangles and circles and flood filled with a dark brown. Then used outer bevel on them. For door I contracted selection and floodfilled with wood grain. For lights in windows and door. I contracted selection and flood filled with a gradient of the yellow and orange looking colors. I then drew in the lines to make panes and added door knob.
• I then added roof to well and added posts to support it and covered entry. If you've got a well...you've got to have a way to get water out of it, so I added log with supports, rope, turn handle, and of course we had to have a bucket.
• After getting actual structures to my liking I used the Retouch>Soften feature and went over everything with the soften brush.

Now for the fun part. I started doing my gardening (which I should have been doing in my own yard, but I was having too much fun with this).

• Dragging out my picture tubes and selections from different pictures that had flowers in them I added all the flowers around the cottage.
• Deciding we needed some flowering trees in the background, I selected the trunk from the existing tree, copied it as a new layer and resized. The using clone tool, I added leaves and then with tubes added flowers.
• I then softened the trees and flowers.

It was time to tackle the water and reflections which I had been dreading as must tutorials I had done had the water darker but I'd noted that his water generally reflected light.

• I first selected top portion of picture, copied as new layer, and flipped and adjusted it to fit properly.
• I then darkened it somewhat, added some white streaks as ripples, smudged and applied motion blur.
• This effect didn't satisfy me as water was still too dark and the wrong color. I added a new layer and painted the water with a light blue, then reduced opacity to 35%.
• This was better but still not the effect I wanted. So I then added another layer and airbrushed in some yellow, peach, beige, and lilac colors in the center of the lake. Taking the smudge tool on small setting I made multiple passes across picture to smudge the colors together and with the other portions of the lake. I then reduced opacity to 55 %
• To try to illuminate the water a bit more I played around with the lighting effect.

Since I couldn't think of anything else to do with the water I decided to decorate the yard a bit as I would if this was my home.

• Using various tubes I knew I'd have to have some chairs sitting outside to enjoy this lovely setting so I added some twig chairs to the front and adirondack chairs on the upper level.
• Then I decided since I like rabbits I'd add a couple of rabbit statues to the stone wall.
• I decided this was a setting that called for wildlife so I had to add a deer up near the back woods.... and let's not forget a nice cat on the steps waiting to greet me.
• A pond or lake this peaceful needed a few ducks and a swan so I added those. Then decided the ducks would like some cat tails and so I gave them some.

After leaving the picture and coming back later I decided it was too bright. (I didn't think the windows would show light unless is was almost dusk and lights needed inside) I also looked back at some of the paintings and saw that a lot of his skies had a yellowish, pinkish look so I changed the sky and then darkened the main picture.

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Created June 28, 2002