I searched my PaperWhimsy stash of images and came up with this nostalgic spring scene.
I love the way it looks like a fancy cover for an old fashion book.
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| Country Lass in Blue by EKDuncan |
As always there are several ways to create and alter digital art projects.
I'm learning Photoshop so it is currently my toolbox of choice for crating digitally.
So far it has been a great adventure and I'm glad I've finally decided to
put some time and effort into learning how to use it.
I still have a long way to go; however creating fun pieces like this one keeps me in the game.
I used 4 digital images from PaperWhimsy to create this whimsical piece of Book Cover Art.
These are the PaperWhimsy Images used in my project.
All the images came from the
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| The Maiden 03 - from PaperWhimsy's Beautiful Faces Collection |
I started with this great Victorian image of a country lass.
In Photoshop I removed the background and colorized her.
I did this by creating a separate layer for each part of her I colored.
There is a layer to color her skin, another for her hair, another for her scarf...
and on and on till I had every part of her colored the way I wanted.
Keeping a separate layer for each element will allow me to easily change
her colors later down the line should I want to give her a different look.
As I created each coloring layer, I named it with the part of her I was coloring and the color code I used to color that layer. This allowed me to have an easy reference for what layer I was working on and so I would know the exact color for that layer. It's just a handy trick that helps me keep things straight when I'm working.
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| The Country 03 - from PaperWhimsy's Beautiful Places Collection |
The right hand portion of this scene became the background of my project.
I did a super fast coloring job on it by added a gradient overlay layer in Photoshop.
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| Starburst 02 - from PaperWhimsy's Background Collection. |
I added this starburst pattern as a layer over my scenic background.
I changed the Blending Mode for this layer from Normal to Darken
and brought down the opacity to 44%
I then added a new layer and brushed in some light blue in the sky area.
The Blending Mode was changed to Multiply and the Opacity to 67%
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| Pastel Frame 01 - from the PaperWhimsy Elements Collection |
This great frame was used to finish off my Book Cover Art project.
I adjusted the sizing a bit via the Edit - Free Transform Mode in Photoshop.
I also changed the color a bit to match my Country Lass via:
Adjustment Layer - Selective Color
I changed the Greens to be
Cyan +95
Magenta +45
Yellow -46
Black 0
Method - Absolute
This changed my frame color to the grayish blue I wanted.
Finally I used the burn tool to darken the edges of the entire frame.
The finished project
In putting it all together I decided I wanted the girls arms outside of the frame
so she is the top layer and then I erased out any part of her skirt that stuck
out over the frames edges.
This gave the illusion as if she was standing behind the frame with just her arms poking through.
Drop Shadows were added to the Country Lass and the frame
to give the piece a more dimensional feel.
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How I was inspired
Both this and my previous Book Cover Art project were inspired by
Gale of PaperWhimsy and her recent Stage Tutorial for this great scene.
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| This whimsical stage scene is by Gale of PaperWhimsy |
Gale's PaperWhimsy - Stage Tutorial for this great composition can be seen HERE
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