I’ve been promising for weeks. So here it is ~ how I create one of my compositions.
Oh Bear… 65 layers +/- in the making! One of my more involved works because all of the elements were taken by me, no stock images, and the birds don’t count because they are actually a brush. Warning… this also made for a really lengthy post. Ready, here it goes…
The Inspiration: The movie Goodbye Christopher Robbin, a biographical about the author A.A. Milne and how Winnie-the-Pooh came to be, mixed with the 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton, and some deeply connected mementos from my past.
The Main Characters:
The blank canvas… If I just walk a few feet more up the hill, a sea of rooftops would appear.
An old camera case about 12″x13″
All about the hair.
All about the bear.
The rough stages ~ The girl, the bear, and the suitcase.
There were many, many edits in between layers… tweaking the masking, to correcting colors, to warping objects, to cloning in this and out that. So let’s move on…
Setting the Scene:
Not surprising that I got some funny looks as I staged this scene.
The teapot, teacups and saucers were shot on a black background making them relatively easy to mask.
Adding the chair, the teapot, and lots of cups! It’s getting there.
Believability: It’s all in the details. Light – Keeping in mind when I took the first background scene where the sun was and direction of light on my indoor shots was an important first step so when placing things into the scene, the light matched. Shadows – Notice I kept the girl’s shadow from the original, but the bear and the suitcase don’t have one, adding them is a must. Or notice how the back of the chair is partially in shadow, indicating the sun was in a slightly different direction than on the girl; thus, the shadow on the back of the chair needed to be removed while keeping the shadow behind the chair. The really really small details – Adding blades of grass in front of some teacups to make them appear in the grass and not on it, cloning grass from the chair image to match the grass of the background image and vice versa, and one of the biggest challenges make the bear walk, not float.
Mood: And now the real fun.
The textures – This is the element that I find really helps set the mood by using just one texture or many, enhancing just a portion or the entire image to tie it all together, as well as using the color(s) or desaturating them leaving only texture behind, as well as changing the opacity, the blending mode, or all the above to achieve a dark and moody or bright and cheery image. The possibilities are endless! The sky – What better way to enhance a mood or completely change the story than by adding just the right sky or clouds… Sunrise, sunset, rain, snow, or a even a rainbow… each one tells a very different story. Real or fantasy? I like it to be somewhere in between. A little distortion can go a long way. Distorting a building, a horizon, or even a bear can add a bit of whimsy and is a nice balance between real and fantasy. Oh, and a few birds, of course can’t hurt.
Once again, between each new layer there were many many edits with many different tools. Tool tip: A relatively new technique to me, but now my go-to for adjusting a single area, big or small, even as small as a single teacup, is the curves adjustment. I use the Lasso tool to select, then feather the selection quite a bit, hit Control (on a PC) + M to bring up the curves window, pulling the curve to lighten or darken, whether to bring out a little more detail, deepen shadow, or change the color. Quick and easy!
The result: The final image as it went to the printer and on display at the Transformations Exhibition
Oh Bear. . .
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still there, that little opening, but now it is part of another story… The Winter House. Sometimes it takes time for those dreams to become reality (or vice versa) and sometimes it’s almost instantaneous.
