Art Wortd Coop

And Now for Something Completely Different  ... I  think that is my new favorite blog title, and I hope to use it a lot in 2011.
Tonight I finalized a project that has been pending for a few weeks now. I have sort of been saving it for dessert because I knew the challenges it would provide would be different and require a whole different mindset from the pet art.  One of my repeat clients wanted me to create a painterly style piece from a vacation photograph.  Check it out ....

"San Miguel" ( see proofs) © rebecca collins / artpaw.com

About the art:  My main request from the client was to remove the cars. That was a pretty easy fix with the clone tool. Then I played with saturation, then filters, them smudge tool, then the paint tool. I removed some vertical antennas and lines in the horizon that were distracting, but wanted to leave that one line going to the buildings because for me that line makes the entire piece work. With Photoshop it can be way too tempting to sanitize everything in a photograph and too often people will take away something in a knee jerk reaction sort of way without really seeing what the "offending" item could really be adding to the composition.

Once I had removed the cars everything seemed a little too quiet and lifeless so I added a pigeon. Well I am an animal over after all. I tried 2 and then 3 pigeons, but one single bird was the answer, because with just one you still get a sense of a sleepy little street in a small town. See the detail image below.