by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, people photography, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Art – Kristi Elias
I have watched Kristi grow and set her work apart from others on so many levels. It has been an amazing journey to watch. Here is some of Kristi’s work and words to inspire you in your artistic quest in photography. While Kristi’s images do not involve painting per se they have a distinctive art feel to them. I turn this post over to Kristi.
Look carefully at this image and check out the background build.
(not to mention the build and definition on the fighter) – image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Original capture. Note the kicker lights that help with background separation and extraction.
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“I am a fine art portrait photographer, a good portion of my work is conceptual composites. I create between 40-over 60 composites a week for client orders, some are more involved than others. The amount of time to create the composite varies depending on if I am reinventing the wheel and creating a new concept and artwork from scratch or re-creating a piece that I have created for another client before.
After processing. image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Original capture. image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“Most of my backgrounds were taken during our vacations, I pick vacation spots based on images I would like to create. Medieval and abandoned castles are my favorite, this year we are going back to Europe and I already have a shot list of where I want to go.
Original captures. See the final below. (I merged the three images original for this illustration: ED.)
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Final image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“After I shoot a session, I upload my images into lightroom and cull through them rating my favorites. After that, I will open my selected image into photoshop and create the composite. Sometimes my composites could be 5 images put together to create the final image and sometimes just 2 images. After I have created my final composite, I use NIK Software Color EFX Pro 4 to create my final vision. I have a few go-to tools that I like to use, but overall each image is treated differently as its own piece of art. Some of my go-to’s are dark contrast and bleach bypass and darken lighten center. The best thing to do is go through all the filters and see what each one does and play with all the levels. Before I start an edit I look at the image and decide what color pallets, hues, and mood I want the final image to portray. I have created hand-painted backgrounds that I photographed and use for textures in my work.
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Starting with a well-lit capture that has depth and dimension makes selling the final image that much easier image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“Another important part involved in my editing, I listen to Love songs or country love songs on pandora while I edit. Mood music :).”
www.KristiElias.com (Masterpiece Portraits)
www.KristiSuttonElias.com (Editorial and Advertising)
Kristi will be teaching a week long class on “The Fine Art of Portraiture” at Texas school this year. Click on the link to learn more about the class. It will be a very creative and fun class!
https://www.texasschool.org/speaker-lineup/kristie-elias/
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, photography, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Photo Art – Arica Dorff
I met Arika when she was on a road trip creating images for her pet photography business. She was passing through Sedona, and I had the pleasure to make her acquaintance and discovered her pet art painting. I love the expression of her pet portraits and the feel of her art. I think you will too!
Here’s Arika.
“I got into digital pet paintings using Corel Painter after I sold my pet photography studio in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had my studio for nine years and always wanted to offer my clients the option to have their portraits enhanced to a painting, but I never had the time to devote to learning the art. Specializing in painting pets was a natural decision for me since working with domestic animals, and their awesome owners had been my niche for my entire photography and teaching career.
Had to put this photo of Lola right up front! Check out the bling! © Arica Dorff Photography
Lola before. Arica is often working from cell phone images supplied by her clients
Getting started I reached out to two well-known pet painters whose work I admired and I had the opportunity to train with them one-on-one. Their process of turning a photo into a painting is completely opposite of each other, and I quickly realized that, like any other art form, there is no right or wrong way to do things. Working one-on-one with artists you admire, along with online tutorials, is what I recommend to anyone wanting to learn Corel Painter. Painter is much like Photoshop in the sense that they are both incredibly powerful programs but not something the average person could sit down and use with ease without some training and understanding of how the software functions. If you are a Photoshop user, I’m sure you can recall your beginning stages of learning and how you wanted to throw your computer out the window because you couldn’t accomplish what should have been a very simple task. Or maybe you accidentally hit something on your keyboard, and now nothing is working properly. I’ve been there too. So save yourself a headache and invest in training and tutorials when learning Corel Painter and getting started will be fun!
Tasha – Makes you want to say AWWWW. © Arica Dorff Photography
Tasha original capture.
As portrait photographers, we make decisions every day regarding lighting and how we want the light to fall on our subjects. But when I started painting I realized that shadows were something to which I never gave much thought. I would just light my subjects the way I wanted, and the shadows were naturally just wherever they were. Well, when you hand paint a background in like I do for most of my paintings (as opposed to enhancing the current background in the portrait) your full-length subjects would be floating on the background if you didn’t anchor them with a shadow. Such a simple concept, but not something I ever gave much thought to until I had to create my shadows.
Painting also forced me to pay more attention to the direction of where light was coming from, which is useful when creating dimension and depth in your backgrounds. Notice how most of my backgrounds have a lighter area near the animals face, this lighter area always coincides from which the direction the light is coming. The opposite side of the painting is always a darker shade which represents the natural fall off of light.
Emma – Great expression © Arica Dorff Photography
Emma Before.
Pets eyes are my favorite part of every painting (okay wispy stray hairs might be an equal favorite), but the eyes are what makes the paintings come to life. When doing digital paintings, I often use the existing photo and just enhance it with detailed brush strokes. But not with eyes, I always paint in the eyes freehand. Step 1: Paint in the eye color. Step 2: Paint in the black pupil. Step 3: Paint in the white catchlight – make sure it’s on the same side of the eye where the light is coming from! Step 4: Paint in the counter catch light area with lighter highlights to bring the eyes to life.
Since I’ve done some teaching in the pet photography world, I’ve had a lot of people asking me to train them on digital pet paintings. I currently offer one-on-one screen sharing training sessions, and I’m working on putting together a downloadable video tutorial. For the photographers who don’t have the time or desire to learn to paint, I offer a wholesale option where I send them the digital artwork for them to brand and print for their clients (as opposed to my retail customers who I present with canvas gallery wraps).
Cooper – © Arica Dorff Photography
Cooper – Before.
Digital Pet Paintings have been an awesome way for me to stay connected with the pet photography community, pet owners who I love to create cherished art for, and I get to do it all while hanging out with my pup and working from home!”
Check out more of Arica’s work. aricadorff.com
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – If you are someone who is creating Painterly Art with photography as a base, or know someone who is, and would like to be featured here on Successful-Photographer get in touch.
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, photographer profile, photography, photography books, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday painterly Photo Art – Karen Sperling
Karen’s exquisite work speaks for itself. I’ll let her tell ‘the rest of the Story.’
“My mother was an artist and my father enjoyed photography, so I’ve been painting and taking photos for as long as I can remember. But I never actually finished anything because I was never encouraged to paint or take photos. So I majored in English in college and after graduating, I worked as a writer and an editor for newspapers, magazines and book publishers, including McGraw-Hill. But I never forgot about art and photography. I minored in art in college and continued to dabble in painting and photography through the years and spent a lot of time in museums and galleries.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Kevin Kubota
“Little did I know that I was creating the perfect skill set for writing the first Painter manual, a gig I got through networking in the New York Mac Users Group in the late 1980s. And I’ve been writing about and teaching Painter ever since.
I never thought of myself as an artist and in the early days, I featured the work of other artists in my Painter tutorials, classes, and books. In 2001, after my talk at the national PPA convention, the editor of PEI, a magazine that was later folded into Professional Photographer Magazine, invited me to do an article about creating my art in Painter. When I said I didn’t paint, she said, “You could do it.” And I did! A little encouragement went a long way, and I use this experience daily teaching photographers to paint. I honestly believe if you think you can paint, you probably can, and I’m here to encourage you to try. It’s amazing how much you can do when someone whispers in your ear; you can do it.
© Karen Sperling -Photo © Karah Sambuco
“My involvement with Painter has opened doors that I would never have imagined. In 2003 I started to paint commissioned portraits directly for clients and photographers for their customers. And in 2007 I had my first gallery show in New York of my abstract art. More recently, I was named the exclusively commissioned painter for a TV cover manufacturer.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“So I went from not thinking of myself as an artist to being paid for paintings, which is why I truly believe if I can do it, you can, with study and practice, and I encourage you to try.
Because of my many years teaching Painter, I have many different painting styles because I’m always interested in showing something new. One of the things I like about Painter is experimenting and inventing new looks and styles. I know having a lot of different styles goes against the grain of most photography experts who say you should promote one style, but I look to Picasso, who had many styles during his career. So we’ll call my style eclectic so that I can keep painting in any way I like at the moment.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Felicia Tausig
“I find offering different styles helps sell commissioned portraits to a broader base of clients and photographers. I also offer a variety of styles in my books, videos, and classes. I encourage students to try all the different styles I teach. In this way, they can pick and choose elements to include in their own paintings to create their individual style. Too many times, students paint exactly like someone they studied with instead of finding their own voice and vision.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“If you’ve been thinking about learning to paint, I encourage you to try, and if you’ve been thinking about offering paintings based on your photos to your clients, I urge you to try that, too. And I’m here to either paint for you or to show you how to do it yourself!”
Biography
Karen Sperling is an Elite Corel Painter Master and the original Painter expert—she wrote the first several Painter manuals when the software was first invented, and many published Painter books, including her newly published Painting for Photographers Volume 3, currently available at Amazon.
Karen wrote one of the Forewords and was a featured artist in Cecil Wiliams’ book, Painter Showcase.
Karen has been interviewed on radio and in many podcasts, including Michael Coy’s Cashtography.
Sperling has taught photographers to use Corel Painter at just about every venue there is, including the national Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and WPPI conventions, local PPA affiliates and PPA schools. Photographers travel to study with Karen in Los Angeles from as far away as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa, and from all around the United States, both in classes and individually.
Karen is known for taking complex art and software concepts and boiling them down into easy-to-follow, thorough steps. Her concise, complete books, tutorials, and classes have made painting accessible to photographers who never thought they could paint, but always wanted to try. Karen demystifies Painter’s mysteries and photographers who study with her report being able to sell their works of art to commissioned portrait clients and in galleries for tens of thousands of dollars.
Clients and photographers alike commission painted portraits by Karen Sperling, an artist in her own right who minored in art in college and who has exhibited her paintings in New York and Los Angeles and during Art Basel Miami Beach.
Karen’s fine art and commissioned portraits are held in private collections around the world.
To study with Karen or to commission her to paint portraits for your clients, visit her website:
http://www.artistrymag.com/ Email at [email protected]
Karen’s books at Amazon
Connect with her on Facebook
Subscribe to her on youtube
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, people photography, photography, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Photo Art
Sandy Harrison
The Artist
“As a child, I was always intrigued with the old black and white photos my dad shared with me about his experience in WWII and how each image told a story of a time before me. My dad gave me my first SLR camera when I was in middle school. My love of photography took off! I was hooked and drawn to capturing landscapes, flowers, and bug pictures. Together, we used the darkroom equipment in our basement. I was in awe as I watched images appear on the glossy white paper right in front of my eyes.
Painted Image – © Sandy Harrison
Before Image
I landed a job at the local 6 Hour Film Lab. Instead of sending the small cassette of film off to be developed, I was able to develop and print in the small re-purposed gas station. I spent mornings in the dark cracking open cassettes and hanging the film on big reel hangers which mechanically dipped the hangers into the developing bins and through the big dryers. Afternoons were spent viewing the film. Once the film was printed, I gathered the big reel of paper and started it on its way through the paper developer machine.
Didn’t know then, but later was amazed that my Lab experience helped me in my photography business
with such things as color, density, and over and under-exposed negatives.
Painted Image – © Sandy Harrison
Before Image – © Sandy Harrison
I loved to work for the owner’s of the lab at their Camera Store/Portrait Studio. I would spend hours watching the owner take portrait sessions. She encouraged me to learn.
I’ve studied under some amazing talented masters but a few who really touched my heart throughout the years are Van Moore, John and Mary Beavers, Colbert Howell and Rick Alexander. Without the teaching and giving of themselves, I would not be who I am today.
I have welcomed the digital era diving full force in 2000 converting to one hundred percent digital medium from film and have never looked back. I love the flexibility of the digital darkroom aka the computer! I continue to learn and move upward with the flow as the digital medium is in constant change.
Painted Image – © Sandy Harrison
Before Image
With the switch to the digital era, came a glimpse of something new again. I sat in a class taught by Marilyn Sholin teaching Correl Painter. It was the vibrant colors and uniqueness of her portrait art that caught my eye. I told myself that day; I needed to learn more about this amazing technique. She was offering workshops just two hours from Charlotte. I enrolled in one of her workshops and again was hooked! The creativity I hoped to accomplish with painter was that of what I see on the walls in museums! I have continued to grow as a photographic artist the past six years or so with the help of Marilyn and her workshops and private tutoring.
Painted Image – © sandy harrison
Before Image
Myself, being a photographer, I was inclined to stay in the lines and make a photographic print. She has taught me to be loose, messy and think outside the lines. She encourages her students not to copy but to create a style of their own. In doing so, Marilyn directed me to another Master Artist, Heather Michelle. Heather’s style of painting is more of a traditional approach as well as teaching color theory. Just what I needed as a classically trained portrait photographer. After studying under both of these Master Artists, I’ve tried to take both styles and techniques
and make something of my own. Every painting I do is a work of art from my heart.
I would encourage you to always continue your education. Embrace the new! Accept the challenge of change and make it your own.
Take your craft and your experience and be open to share it with one another. Looking back on my successful career of over 30 years, I am so thankful to those that shared their knowledge with me.
One Moment, One Click of a Shutter and Time Stands Still Forever…
Happy brush strokes!”
To see more of Sandy’s work. www.PhotographicElegance.net
Biography
Sandy Harrison was born in Port Huron, Michigan. She started her career in photography at the age of 20, just newly married. She continued living in Michigan while starting a family and pursuing her passion for photography until moving to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1988 where it
would be a reality and full-time employment in a portrait studio. There she learned the art of classical lighting and posing from Master photographers at the local and state conventions
and workshops.
Sandy embraced her craft and was hired to photograph well-known dignitaries such as Michael Gorbachev. She was hired to photograph basketball star, Larry Johnson’s wedding along with many of the Charlotte Hornet basketball families in the 1990’s. She was also the first to be featured on the Carolina Bride Magazines cover adorning Lisa Cooley, Charlotte’s premiere news person. Sandy’s keen eye and ability to capture the true essence her subject makes her a sought after photographic artist. Her work continues and hangs in many homes in Charlotte and the surrounding area.
Sandy pioneered the digital era in the Charlotte area being one of the first to make the transition to
the new digital media. In doing so, she surpassed many of her associates and got a head start
in the digital world in 1999 and has never looked back.
Keeping true to her passion and drive wanting to learn new things, Sandy started painting portraits in
2009. She continually studies under several Master Painters and is always expanding her knowledge in
yet another medium.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, people photography, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Photo Art – Paul Tumason
It’s fun to find new art and artists (to me) once you start poking around. I’m happy to share Paul’s painterly photography work with you today on the Successful-Photographer blog.
Paul’s Thoughts on Painterly Portrait Art.
“A portrait describes what the subject looks like in a painting, a photograph or a sculpture.
Portraits might include other objects which help to explain the subjects, A portrait, like all art, is something to “read”.
Cristi & the Boys Painter Art – © Paul Tumason
Cristi & the Boys before – Notice that Paul is starting with a very nicely posed and lit image before he begins the painting process.
I enjoy being engaged with the story of the subjects. Of course, so much is left to our imaginations, but the artist gives us clues about what the subject is thinking, what they do, or the emotions held deep inside them, what they feel about themselves, and of course, what they look like.
Some of us just think of the likeness that shall be portrayed, But to me, it’s what the subject tells us in confidence about themselves that makes portraiture so interested to me. Yes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
An extraction from and image and treated with a pastel feel – © Paul Tumason
Original ballet capture – © Paul Tumason
On the creating my “painted” images, I start with my photograph, not always a formal portrait, as I like the candid type of unaware subjects. Like every one of us, we have particular likes and dislikes, and preferences. We just like certain things. I find this hard to explain: but I’ll attribute it to human nature.
I try to make everything left in the image count for something.
The painting process for me is to soften some things, leave some sharp, lose some edges, define as little as possible while leaving as much as possible for the viewer’ imagination.
‘Ellie’ – © Paul Tumason
‘Ellie’ before – See how the artistic treatment in the after image simplifies the scene and brings the subject forward. © Paul Tumason
Much of my work is for my enjoyment. I like to print images, sometimes to study, but often to show to prospects, hoping that they would really like them and commission me to do a portrait for them in this style. In a way, it’s a method of marketing and separating myself from the competition.”
Paul has taught portraiture, including composition and lighting to photographers since the 1980’s including some Corel Painter classes here and there. He doesn’t work at this as a regular gig. If you are interested in Paul’s style, let him know if you’d like to have a class. He would love to schedule something for you. Otherwise, you are always welcome for a brief phone conversation to talk about our painterly art, or if you’d like to hire Paul as a tutor.
Learn more and view Paul’s work at www.tumasonpaintings.com
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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