Beach Dog Memorial
The Request
Today is my bosses birthday. I wanted to see if it was possible to get a picture of her two dogs together. The first dog Hailey was her heart dog and passed away a few years ago.
The second dog Winnie is her heart healer dog. I would love to try to take the pictures to get both dogs in the same photo. Maybe a painting style photo.
If you use the beach photo as the background, can you make the sky a pinkish sunset? My boss also goes to the beach and collect seashells that are shaped like hearts and calls them her hearts for Hailey. She also looks for rainbows as her girls way saying hello.
Thank you in advance for any help!
The Results
There were other reference images in the request, but I only kept the 2 that I worked with. Most of them had a common issue I find in pet photos… people always take pictures of their pets from above, which makes them really hard to put into new backgrounds! The photo fo the dog on the couch was the only one that would fit into the beach scene, and the OP had seemed particulary interested in using that one.
The first thing I did was edit the photorealistic version of what I wanted to paint, expanding and outpainting it to make more room. I added a sunset and rainbow to the sky, and then added in the second dog with shadows that matched the new background. Once the photoreaslistic version was complete I gave the whole thing an oil paint treatment!
Other Versions
My painting techniques vary with each one I do, and no two are exactly alike. Beacuse I am not a true “artist”, I can’t just freehand paint an image, I have to use the original photo as my base and then “paint” overtop of it, then delete the original once I am done. My digital painting process involves a number of different steps, starting with some color and lighting adjustments, Then I try a dozen or so different filters to change the textures, or even make subtle changes to the outlines and shapes of the elements in the image. Different photo don’t always achieve the same effect with a given filter, the composition of that photo will alter them. So I run through them all and decide which one(s) give me the aesthetic I am looking for.
The last and most important step is taking the image into a program called Corel Painter, which has brushes that do an unbelievable job of mimicking real-life paint texture, with visible brush strokes and the illusion of depth and build up of the paint media. There are literally thousands of different brushes, and I have only used a fraction of them! After painting the image, I was unhappy with the way the blending of the paint layers had mostly obscured the rainbow, so I ended up hand-painting a new one in.
