Making a Textured Sketch from a Digital Photo

Technically, the photo is a virtual one. I made the scene out of primitives and meshes and then "photographed" the rendered image. Still looking for ways to make satisfying landscape art without Bryce. Here's a mixed media sketch one of my landscapes, Bowl of Water.

Bowl of Water (sketched) by Elaine Greywalker

I thought it might be fun to make this appear to be a sketch from life on a another planet. I like the effect, achieved with commercial filters and brushes, with some personal modifications. Heres' the original image.

Bowl of Water by Elaine Greywalker

The effect is not as sketchy as I imagined it would be, particularly from a distance. Close up you can see more texture. Sometimes I wish for a way to blow up the image to about five times the size to make the texture stronger.

I did enjoy the brushes. Nice to get back to a bit of gestural involvement.

Finding My Himal

Since forever I've resorted to saying, "I'm going to go sit on a mountain top in Nepal!" when things got rough. Well, they're rough now and I'm focused on making my own Himalayan mountains.

The topological map import into Bryce didn't work, mostly because I couldn't find a free one that was appropriate. I tried making my own by drawing over a screen shot. Not very successful either. I ended up with lots of alien towers instead of mountains.

So, I resigned myself to making mountains in Bryce that sort of approximate a Himal feel. These are the best ones so far:

Generated these using the Bryce Fractal:Slickrock filter with a bit of Erode and Smoothing thrown in.
Not totally enamored of the texture. The shape is nice and the snow is in good spots.

You can see other attempts on my Facebook fan page.

Did you know that Nepal is like the Switzerland or Netherlands of Asia? People move in and across from all surrounding countries. There doesn't seem to really be a "native" Nepalese. In the south it's Indian Nepal and in the North it's Tibetan Nepal. Yet somehow all these people live and let live together.

There's a lot of photos, movies, and stories on Mark Horrell's site. Almost like being there.

Best of Skies Project: Bryce

Here are the best of the skies, made with or from Bryce, during my Skies 365 Project. I chose them for originality (not a Bryce preset sky) and mood. There seem to be two basic variations: light and dark. The dark skies were inspired by seeing a red moon rising one fall evening at the beach. Anytime you see a night sky that transports you without conscious effort to early morning sun rising on doomsday, it tends to affect you. Dark Light comes closest to what I actually saw  that night. I did take a photo with my phone, but it's not very good and I had to do things to it to make it look right.

I prefer day, apparently, since there are more of those. 

LIGHTS

Orange, 2012

Red Dawning Water, 2012

Rocky Yellow, 2012

102911, 2011

Foggy Water, 2011

Blue Sky Haze, 2012

DARKS

Ashnight with Stars, 2011

Dark Light, 2011

Moon Obsession (glowing), 2011

Next steps would be to make these commercially available. I have a couple of online spots where you can find them. I could also make physical prints for my next showing in September. Sounds like a lot of work, even just thinking about it. Better get started then!

Find out more about Make Something 365