There are two versions of this painting, so make sure you see them both. This first version was what I ended up with after painting in Art Rage 3.0. I did the entire image using only the watercolor tool, and was very pleased with the results. However, I thought it lacked something, so I exported this image with its various layers as a Photoshop document, and did some more work in that program. Here’s the results of that…
This definitely gave the image some punch. I used a couple of iStock images I had on a resources disk from Photoshop Creative magazine; one image of tree branches in autumn and the other a circuit board. The first obviously went in the upper left corner of the pic. I ran it through the water color filter, then faded in the edges using the maple leaf brush in Photoshop, then added more maple leaves to work it into the background a bit more. The circuit board image I had to work on a bit more; inverting it, colorizing it, and again fading in the edges using a layer mask and a few textured brushes (the maple leaf and one of the oil brushes).
I also overlaid some texture photos, again from my Photoshop Creative resources disk. And you can see the final result.
I always say I plan to take more time to do art. It’s hard to find that time given my current workload. But playing in Art Rage made things rather simple; just a few minutes here, a few minutes there, and then about an hour this evening finishing up the effects and postwork. We’ll see if I can pull this off again in the near future.
