Captured this Gila Woodpecker in our garden yesterday winging its way from the suet feeder on the Arizona Ash against quite a strong wind. Painting created using Free Fotosketch and a lot of pre-editing in CS4 to get rid of the tree background.
Sitting having my coffee while checking my mail on my Net Book, and without Fotosketcher to give exact step by step,
This controls the BG.
Use default Oil Painting #6, then using Texture down arrows try the 3 one by one.
After I get the texture I think I want I play with the sliders.
Then I tweak it in CS4, usually the eye. (Don't always use it, however, in a drawing, I will QM the eye and give it a shot of Filter>other>High Pass and see what it looks like as it slightly embosses a slight line around the eye. Doesn't always work, but once in awhile, like doing Racoon's eye, it gave it a bit of luminousity)
A tip that works for me, especially if I do a redo of something I posted. To regain a bit of the slight degradation from doing it again, I always give it a pass of Curves>default Linear Contrast, maybe 2. One of my faults is a heavy hand of sharpening, and I try to keep away from that. Maybe it won't be a problem when my eye is completely healed from my surgery. My Surgeon says it will take a year.
There I am getting windy again
Hope this helps
Gus
Last edited by Gus Hallgren; 03-12-2010 at 09:26 AM.
Reason: Spelling
Wings Away Painting
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