Rosie in her Bed

Starting with a photo of my cat, Rosie, I painted over it big blocks of color using Sketches Pro. Then I processed it in iColorama for color and texture.

My starting point is my iPhone 7 Plus photo, shot with depth effect.

I opened the photo in Sketches Pro. I used the acrylic brush to paint over the photo with big blocks of color. Then I used the smudge tool to smooth it. Then I used a marker tool to paint in the white whiskers. I saved the image to my camera roll.

I opened the image in iColorama. I used Effect/Scrape preset 1 to get a more painterly effect, trying all the sliders. Then I used Effect/Raise preset 1 at medium opacity, which gives a bit of 3d effect.

I liked the image so far, but her head is not well delineated from her body, because the tones are so similar. So I used Brush/Paint, with a very small brush, and drew a line along her right cheek. Then I applied Effect/Raise preset 1 with medium opacity, using an inverted brush mask with a very small brush to apply the Raise effect only to the line, so that it would match the texture of the rest of the face.

I used a preset under Effect/Blend to blur the background, including her body, to mimic the depth effect in the original photo. I used a brush mask to protect her face and whiskers, so they would not be blurred.

I used Tone/Enhance to modify the color.

I used Adjust/Exposure to reduce the exposure a bit on the background, including her body, with a brush mask to protect her face. This was to keep her face the brightest part of the image.

I used the same technique to reduce the exposure of the white spot in the foreground, right.

I liked the image so far, but I realized that it lost the feeling of Rosie's bed; instead it felt like she was just floating there. So I used Brush/Tools/Burn and Brush/Tools/Dodge to brighten and darken parts of the bed to give it a 3D feel. I used the default brush, which had the nice side effect of giving the bed a fleecy texture, similar to the actual bed.