PhotoProject :: Building a “Hand Drawn Photo” in 3 layers

I felt it was time to do something creative for this blog (and instagram). I had selected this photo of the young Osprey on the nest on the Mooloolaba spit to make a painting or perhaps a pastel drawing. However I felt it also need to be reinterpreted as a “hand draw photo” using a combination of rendering approaches.

First I loaded the original photo into Google Deep Dream Generator and used the Abstract Nature trained AI filter. This created a darker rendering but I loved the strong blue colouring of the sky. Next I took this new version into Corel Painter as the work to base a clone painting using the artist impressionist clone brush and a linen surface texture and also emphasised warm colours or the plumage and nest.

For the Final Work (above) I used On1 Photo RAW and load the original photo as the base layer and the Clone painting as the second layer. Then I used soft light blending mode and used a semi-opacity masking, a lot like a homemade luminosity mask to bring out some of the original photo (eg almost 100% masking over the eye and beak, but variable 75% or lower on selected parts of the nest and feathers). I also lifted the vibrancy of the blue and yellow/oranges a fraction to give me a strong complimentary colour feel. Finally I cropped in a little to add a bit more drama to the composition.