snap art tutorial #3, flowers pen and ink

I promised you all a tutorial on fine art "pen and ink" flowers a couple of weeks ago, so here it is. This is a technique that uses two Photoshop plug-ins from Alien Skin software. The first is 'Snap Art', the second is 'Exposure'. The image is from a 10 megapixel Nikon D80 with a 105mm VR.

Objective: A cross between a color pen and ink sketch and a photo. The work should look like it was created by hand on fine art canvas or textured paper while at the same time retain the best details of the original high resolution macro photo.

Here is a simple picture of a flower:

This technique works very well on subjects like florals, where an artistic approach helps accentuate the beauty of the flower. You will notice I prefer an isolated subject when using this process, I really like it when my flowers stand out from the background, but not so much so that my final piece looks like too much like a still life. I tend to think of these pieces as organic still life, the flower is isolated, but it appears with a mottled background, perhaps a more natural setting than either a solid white or black background. In this particular example, I chose a lighter pink flower that really arrests your eyes when you put in on a dark background. Its great when a background is nicely blurred like this example, as the pen and ink technique will really help the subject stand in front of the out of focus elements creating a '3D effect'.

Ok, now that we have a nice subject and realize what we want to accomplish, lets get out hands dirty.

First we are going to duplicate the layer. Layer>Duplicate This way we don't degrade the details of the original photo, and we can play with the opacity of the Snap Art filter to adjust the desired transparency of the effect. Trying to balance the amount of detail vs the amount of the filter may take some experimentation. First, run the filter. I use Settings>Tone Adjustment, contrast high.

Here are the settings for the 'Basic' tab:

Snap Art>Pen and Ink>Tone Adjustment, contrast high>Basic

These settings are a result and trial and error and reflect my personal preference, don't be afraid to experiment as you can use almost any settings in the 'Pen and ink' filter and get good results.

Here is what the Snap Art layer looks like:

Pretty cool on its own, we are going to 'tone down' this layer so that we can get back the colors and some of the detail of the original photo

After the filter is applied, select the opacity percentage and lock it in. In this example, I used a somewhat subtle 29% with the layer style set to "overlay".

Here is what my layer stack and lighting look like:

Layers Palette

"Overlay" allows the nice dark lines of the pen and ink filter to accentuate the edges of our floral, while at the same time helping darken the background and highlight the yellow portion of the flower.

Here is the result:

After toning down the 'pen and ink' layer

At this point you can flatten the image, Layer>Flatten Image, for a pass though Alien Skin's 'Exposure'.

I want this piece to be somewhat grainy and warm, so I am going to use a grainy film. In 'Exposure': Settings>GAF 500-warm.

Now we have this:

Mmmm... nice and warm, a more painterly palette

I was happy with these results, but I still wanted to 'burn' in some areas, particularly the top left had corner, which was still a little too bright for my tastes.

Here is what we have after some 'burning':

Better isolation from a darker background

Our piece is almost finished, but its appearance is still too 'clean' for me. This means a texture layer is in order, something that will make the picture look like is was created on watercolor paper or canvas... I usually try to incorporate both textures, which gives me good results on textured papers printed from my Epson K3 inkset printer.

Inserting a pattern layer, I get this:

Taken straight from the 'How To Wow' Photoshop book, this watercolor texture is indispensable when creating subtle texture on fine art pieces, you can pick up the book from Amazon, or try a similar texture of your own

After a conversion to softlight, here is the result:

Lighting>Soft Light helps to blend the pattern seamlessly into the piece

Our layer palette looks like this:

Notice the change to 'Soft Light', but you can also experiment with 'Overlay' or 'Darken'

Now we flatten the image and add one more texture:

Here is the final piece of the puzzle, watercolor paper overlay, again we integrate it by setting the lighting to 'Soft Light'

This last texture is subtle when the lighting is changed so you probably won't see it on these small web versions, but in the print, the weave of the watercolor texture adds additional organic 'feel' to the image.

After just a little dodging and burning, here is our final piece:

Not for everyone, but I like it :)

Tags: tutorial, snap art