In April I attended “Texas School” for photographers and took an advance Photoshop class on compositing. While I do love to capture images, my real passion is making fine art out of the images that I capture or combining my images with other elements and Photoshop brushes and filter techniques to create a vision of something very different from what was captured through the lens.
Using some of the techniques learn, I’ve decided to embark upon a new adventure, something that I’ve been toying with for some time — to digitally paint my other passion with is the Corvette! We recently purchased our 3rd Corvette… this one is for me to drive as my regular daily driver; a 2011 Arctic White Grand Sport. We already own a 2016 Racing Yellow (hubby’s car) and our classic, a 1967 Maroon coupe which we take to car shows and other special events.
Placing these cars in “virtual backgrounds” and painting them with Photoshop seemed like a great way to combine both of my interests… compositing and digital painting in Photoshop. I already have many opportunities to be around cars… all types of cars… but primarily Corvettes! So I have access to great source material.
I started by going through my library of images and selecting many potential backgrounds of great places we visited and various images that might make good backgrounds for a car placement. These images will be turned into paintings where I can eventually place a car.
Then I selected out our 2016 car… we call it “1 Minion” and began working with Topaz Impressions to find various techniques that looked good as a baseline painterly technique for a car. Baseline only… the car will be finished with a mixer brush and multiple other layers of adjustments in Photoshop depending upon what the final look will be…. either a soft fluid painterly look, or a more dynamic look with obvious brush strokes.
Here is a sample of the base car (the first image) and 11 different techniques that I tested that could be used on a car to begin a virtual painting. I’m eager to get started with some of my virtual backgrounds to test them out. (View large to see the brush strokes.)
