Just like so many people I woke up today and yesterday to a pretty different world. I think most of us been emotional in some ways, even us who aren't Americans. No matter who we are, and what we believe in, this election is historical in many ways....not necessarily good ways, but we have to find a way to learn and cope and be positive. I don't think America has ever been as divided as it is now...and in this divide it can be easy to forget what unites us.

I want to take this moment to say how honored I am to wake up to my third daily devotion....art has to me always been a safe haven, an escape of some sort. That I would get such a special reminder in the middle of a tumult time, means so much. Art is one thing of many that unites us....A liberal and a conservative can look at the same painting...and bond over their appreciation of it. They might even feel the same emotions looking at it...a similar nostalgia. I do think we are more similar than we think, we are all human beings, with hopes...dreams...and I do think most of us are good and want to do good.

It always does blow me away to have people appreciate what I do, it's a surreal sometimes overwhelming feeling. I have grown in confidence and courage the last year. I always been the girl painting in the corner of my room and never really showing it to anybody. Thank you so so much for this honor.... especially thank you to the talented, kind and amazing   who made it happen. 

Thank you guys so much, for the love and kindness, I appreciate every single one of you.

Today I went online and saw that I got my second DD and it truly warms my heart. Not just to know that there's others that appreciate what I do, but because art means so much to me in my personal life. It has become a bit of my safe haven, it's something I turn to when im overwhelmed with any kind of emotion and has been that way for as long as I can remember. I remember dealing with my first broken heart at six years old, not understanding why my dad's best friend just couldn't marry me, trying to drown my sorrows in disney movies and tear soaked ice cream. And then grabbing a paint brush.

If art is anything, its emotional. That's where we are completely free to create, to imagine, to speak, to listen, to discover, to become. And to have something so personal, honored, in any way....is heartwarming. It can be a simple compliment, someone telling me that something I made put a smile on their face, or made them feel....or getting the incredible honor of having two DD's. All of it makes me humble and happy, and I want to thank everyone for their love. If I can't personally thank you for the fav's, please know that I appreciate them so much, i'm just very overwhelmed in my personal life. And thank you so much to erikshoemaker.deviantart.com/ for the feature, a really amazing artist and also an incredibly nice and helpful person. 

Thank you all, so so much...

Manip Academy #4: Manip Walkthrough

I decided to submit a "tutorial" about the journey through a simple landscape manip. Mainly cause I was myself completely lost when I first started doing manips. Going from only knowing painting to trying photo manipulations seemed easy enough but proved very difficult. So these steps are mostly for beginners. 

When creating a manipulation there will be a lot of different steps, some major, some tiny, don't limit yourself and do not be afraid to experiment and try new things. This tutorial is in no way "complete" but it will go through some steps that I myself had trouble with when i first started learning manipulations. There's many different ways to do things, so I encourage you to try new things to find what fits your unique personal workflow.

Step 1. Idea, inspiration, and planning.
This is where the idea for an artwork is born. Perhaps you already have a finished idea in your head or you simply found a very inspiring stock photo you like to work with. At this stage I like to "get to know" my idea a bit further. I like to think a bit about the message of it, what I want it to say, or what mood I want it to portray. I imagine the end result, sometimes very loosely, and start to slowly plan the way there. I paint more than I do manips, and have been painting for many many more years than I have been doing photo manipulations so that is where my personal comfort zone is. That means that I tend to think like a painter, that can both limit me and inspire me. I often consider things such as color and palette, light sources, harmony. These things can be important but make sure you don't stare yourself blind on just the technical aspect of it. I like to start with a loose sketch. I do this even when just creating a photo manipulation, mainly cause it helps me envision the end result but also cause its very helpful in building up stock. The sketch does not have to be perfect so even if you aren't a painter, its something you might find helpful. If i already know a lot of the stock I will be using ( i don't always) I often line them up next to each other to make sure they match. It's a good way to make sure the perspectives will work together but it also gives me an overlook of the different textures and colors of the different photos and what I need to do to create harmony between it in the process. Pick out a good "main" background photo you like to include in your artwork and create a quite large canvas in Photoshop.







Step 2. Building the artwork.

This is where you start building and layering. Taking multiple stock photos and combining them into a completely new picture is really fun but it can also be quite challenging. Sometimes you have to realize that no matter how much you want to use certain stock photos they do not necessarily work that good together. Then put one to the side and use in a different artwork and try another photo. I tend to try many different ones to find what i'm really looking for. Make sure you don't forget to write down the stock artists names as its very important to give credit to all the different stock sources you are using. When I use stock photos I write it down in a notebook on my computer under the title of my work. When combining different stock photos its important to consider perspective, size, blending, light and color. You can combine many similar photos, sometimes just small portions of them, try different layer modes as well. For example if you want a large foreground with more surface, consider using a similar photo, maybe even one of the same scene but slightly different perspective etc. If you want to create your own meadow and you are using two different stock photos, be careful with the blending. Especially if its longer grass/stones/different flowers and angles on the different stock photos. Zoom in, have a large soft eraser on medium high opacity, and blend and erase. You want it to look like its one complete photo.







 Something else to consider is the color, the saturation and the light and shadows. Things need harmony to look realistic. Take a second and study the two different stock photos you are trying to make into one, how do they differ? Look at the colors, how are they different? Will you need to warm one photo up, add some red, make it lighter? In this example the lower part of the field needed more warmth to match the other stock photo better so I went to color balance and added more yellow and red.






You can create realistic landscapes, fantasy landscapes, you don't have to limit yourself. In the manip used as an example in this tutorial I erased a large portion of the background just to keep the shape of a hill and a house, together with the foreground.





 Now you need to fill the new emptiness with something. Here it's quite fun to experiment, try different skies, even try putting different landscapes in layers behind it. 





Step 3. Important touches.

To create harmony the blending is very important. I talked a bit about matching colors and getting smooth lines with the soft erase brush, but don't be afraid to add your own touches with the paintbrush. You don't have to be a painter to do this. For example, when combining multiple stock photos there will be areas that just don't look quite natural when blended softly together. It can be sharper trees that blend too unnatural into the sky, or a piece of the hill just not being defined enough. If you use the paint brush in low opacity, you can use the color picker to pick up actual color tones from your artwork and on a new layer add in your own touches for realism. You can "dot" paint tree branches, or paint on shadows, paint clearer shapes, or even add a splash of color.





Don't forget the big picture in the detail work. Make sure that you add more and more harmony with time, use adjustment layers to build to the mood with color and make sure things blend together nicely.





 In the example manip I felt content with a more colorful saturated sky that I created with the same stock photo but duplicated and rotated. I also added my own paint strokes to blend it together, and then I used a different stock photo of a different sky, as well as a stock photo of a galaxy to set the final harmony. I used the new stock photos on different blend modes to not take over the original sky but rather add atmosphere and realism to it.

Something that can really give a manip away is if the lines between photos are too sharp. You can prevent this by going over the edges (in this case the hill and the water edge) with the smudge tool. Have a low opacity, a soft brush, and slide gently across the edges. Be careful not to distort anything, just realistically soften it.





Another important step is to add in natural shadow and light. I tend to fokus on the edges here, use a soft brush again with the dodge and burn tools. Imagine you are painting shadows and light so be careful and try to stay true to real life. Consider the natural light sources. If you have a sun, or a lamp, the light would naturally fall from that. In this case I wanted to darken the edges of the hill some to make it blend more with the dramatic sky.




 a few other steps that can sometimes add to realism is to lightly very lightly use the eraser on certain edges, like the hill or water. This creates a more blended detailed effect, similar to fog.





You can also with a low opacity soft airbrush/paintbrush on white add faint fog yourself to blend it further. You can also use the color picker and instead of white paint with the tones already present in the artwork to further blend and add realism.





 Consider how simplistic you want your final result, Art doesn't necessarily need a lot to be effective. A simple landscape picture can be just as stunning as a highly detailed artwork. Look at your art, what does it need? Can you add something? Some foliage? A person? A boat? In this case, I thought a boat would be a nice touch in the calm water and I made sure to match it with the current color scheme





I also used the magnetic lasso to mark the roof of the house and then with "selective" color I added in stronger reds, I upped the saturation as well. Remember that every step you make does not have to affect the whole picture. Study layering techniques, blend modes, and layer masks. These tools are many times your best friends in the process. 





Step 4. Light, color, mood, finishing up.

To create moods, add drama, or even turning day to night, you will get some great results using blend modes with layer masks, as well as dodge and burn. You can simply duplicate your layer, and use the dodge and burn tool directly on your artwork. You can create a central fokus, a very defined light source, even god rays. You can imitate the natural light from the sun, the moon, candles. You can enhance storms, moods, weathers. Experiment! But be aware, go too crazy and too heavy handed and it will look unrealistic and you will blow out natural tonal depth and highlights. Sometimes subtle is better.




 When experimenting with colors there's so many different ways to create the result you want. Some of my favorites are selective coloring, color balance, layers with colors and blend modes. If you want a more moody and eerie end result experiment with blues, cyan, deeper tones. Remember that you can build up your results, layer by layer, that is often much nicer looking than just one adjustment layer that is used a bit too heavy. Sometimes subtle color effects looks better, sometimes letting loose and using bold fantasy colors really enhances the picture. Try a few different things and see what you like the best for this particular work. You can add effects depending on atmosphere and mood, play with blurs and softening for a more fragile romantic look, and experiment with textures and sharpening for a bolder more grunge look. Don't forget to slightly sharpen your photo in the end and save it as a PNG!

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Art is fun and individual, it's important to be open for improvements and to leave a lot of room for experiments but find your own voice in your own unique art and keep it. The steps to get to the result is not the most important thing and there's always a million ways to create something. Find what works for you and stay true to your vision, cause its yours and nobody else will create art the same way you do. Be proud of that.

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their interest in my art, their appreciation, comments, favs and watches, it truly makes my day. I think its a gift to make something as personal as art and having someone else appreciate it. I been trying to thank you all personally until i realized its much easier to just make a journal (and it keeps deviantart from thinking im spamming!  ). I am humbled by my Daily Devotion, and very very excited and happy. With all the chaos in the world today I do believe people in this place find a safe haven in both their own artworks as well as others. Art can both challenge you and shake you to the core, but it can also offer you a silent place, a moment of clarity or a short escape. We can find ourselves in art, we can find the world in art. But most importantly I think we can also find the world we want to live in within the art. The hope of a better tomorrow. A strength, a place where theres no limits, nothing holding us back, nothing saying "impossible". Art is a reflection of both reality and dream...and a dream that can be reality. If we just dont give up hope on it. Art is unique in the way its telling us that all emotions are allowed, all expressions are beautiful. It can be "ugly", it can be heartbreaking, it can be real, it can be a dream...its just as valid. Just as beautiful.... Allow youself to feel and create, dont censor your own expression. You can create another world, and do it beautifully, but also dont lose hope on the one we are living in. Thank you everyone for all your love and appreciation