Saverne

I based this painting on a photo by my husband taken in Saverne, France on one of our houseboat vacations. This is a boat basin where we docked our boat. I traced and painted over the photo in ArtRage, and then I toned, textured and finished the image in iColorama. ArtRage gives a nice result, but iColorama really gives it pop.

I started with this photo.

In ArtRage, I imported the photo. ArtRage will let me trace from this photo. But the photo is not actually on a layer, and it will not form part of the exported image. First I used a pen to trace the lines in the image. Then on another layer, which I created under the pen layer, I painted color all over the image. I used ArtRage's setting that allows you to paint while taking color from the photo, as opposed to the color picker (this is a real time saver). I used the air brush, and I set the canvas settings so that there is no paper texture, so the strokes are smooth. Then on a new layer that I positioned above the airbrush layer but below the pen layer, I painted with a white oil pastel where I wanted white highlights.

Now on a layer above the highlight layer, I painted with a black pen to add some detail to the areas of foliage. Then on a layer above that, I used a black pen to draw some detail in the roofs. Then on a layer above that, I used a black pen to draw the lines of reflection in the water. Here you can see all six of my layers.

Here is the result after adjusting the layer opacities. The top layer (the pen tracings of the buildings) is at 69% opacity. The next layer (the pen tracings of the reflections in the water) is set to 58% opacity. The next layer down (the pen drawn details in the roofs) is at 84% opacity. The next layer down (the details in the foliage) is at 50% opacity. The bottom two layers are at 100% opacity.

I opened the image in iColorama and made some color and tone optimizations using Adjust/Tonelab preset 4, and Tone/Enhance and Tone/Duotone. Then I used Effect/Scrape to get this interesting result. I experimented with all the sliders settings.

I used Effect/Blend to blend the ArtRage painting on top of the Scrape image. I tried several blending modes and slider settings. I used an inverted brush mask to paint back details in some areas, from the ArtRage painting.

I used Tone/Lomo to punch up,the color, and I used Preset/Border preset 7 at low radius and no blur to lighten the edges, for the final image.