For week 2 of the March One Four Challenge hosted by Robyn Gosby at Captivate Me, I have decided to give my humble cabbage butterfly in the rosemary bush a painterly treatment.
Week 2 Process – Oil Painting
I wanted to base the work on the cropped original, but intended to ‘clean up’ the twigs in the top right hand corner and the lower one to the right of the butterfly wing. These gave me a lot of trouble! I tried the clone tool unsuccessfully, then gave the healing brush a try, but that did not work either! I wish I had done a bit of gardening before taking the shot, but I was intent on capturing the butterfly before it flew off! So in the end, I gave up on the twig removal task and used my Week 1 image with the lighting effect applied, as it softened the twigs!
That done, I used the Foto Sketcher software, and selected the Oil Painting option. I played with the various parameters including brush stroke intensity (low), colour intensity (high), image simplification (low), and texture (normal) until I was happy with the effect.
For the final step, I opened the image in Photoshop Elements 9, added a little more texture using the texturiser filter and the burlap finish. All that was left to do was to add my watermark.
Here is the result:
Butterfly – Week 2
Just as a reminder, here is the original image and the first two edits:
As always, your comments are welcome. If any of you have a suggestion on how to remove the offending twigs, I am all ears!
Be sure to check out other participants’ work by clicking on this link to the One Four Challenge.
Sv-Anui 
Interesting how you lighted this up, can you lighted the left and right top or is it impossible. I love the wings sue
Hi Sue – The lighting effect puts a kind of spotlight on the butterfly and darkens the corner (top right and bottom left). I did that to de-emphasise the distracting twigs as I didn’t know how else to hide them!
I really like this edit Chris – for me it works. I love the painterly finish and I look straight at the butterfly amd the lovely Rosemary flower.
Such an inviting image. I love it 😀
Thank you Robyn for the encouraging comment.
Its the sort of image I really enjoy 😃
very pretty
😊😊
I love the mauve/ purple flower and hiw it picks up thw grewn accents on the wings
I think I got the gist of what you meant! LOL
Damn my spelling lol
Those damn keys are just too close together on the iphone!
Lovely, just lovely 🙂 I need to get my hands on some of these apps!
Thanks Stacey. Go to http://www.fotosketcher.com... Free!
Lovely, gentle effect, and I agree that your eye is drawn straight to the butterfly 🙂
Thank you for the nice comment, Sue!
I am not usually a fan of paint styled features, your version is pleasant though.
Thanks Ben. If you like it that’s a good sign😊
The oil painting effect works really nicely and seems to give the image a sort of glow. I love the colour combination, the light green and the purple, just perfect!
Oh thank you fir such nice feedback Katie😊
It’s a pleasure. 🙂
LOVE!! There are a number of reasons why. Mainly, your butterfly, which is the start attraction, is emphasized and colored beautifully. Even though everything is soft and painterly it is also detailed. Love the colors and hues…it is such a happy spring-like image. Great work 🙂
Hello Carrie. I always look forward to your feedback as it is precise and encouraging. Thank you for your support. I am very pleased you like this edit.😊
That is so nice to hear, Chris! Thank you. Great edit this week 🙂
I really like this week’s edit. The lighting worked well with the twigs! I like the digital painting it pulls your eye to the butterfly. Beautiful
Thanks Kirsten… Now the easy bit is done, onto next week’s challenge!
beautiful work Chris!! I love this process!! Great texture!
Thank you Cybele – it was fun seeing it unfold!
I really like this edit. It’s very light and happy. 🙂 I can’t wait to see next week’s version.
Thanks Louise – i like the painterly one too!
Yes – painterly indeed! Love what you did with it!
Thank you😊
Love the way this photo turned out in your ‘painterly’ mode, and I especially like the tighter cropped version that appears as your header – to me it highlights the light on the wings and the contrasting colour scheme. (I am looking at it on an ipad mini – your theme may crop the photo differently depending on what sort of device one is using.)
Thanks for commenting Batz! Yes the FotoSketcher app does a really nice just b… It feels a bit like cheating, but I like the result😊
I am a huge fan of FotoSketcher, so naturally I like this very much. Gentle in lightning and colors, yet so detailed, great edit.
Thanks Lore for your support. As I said to Batz. It feels a bit like cheating… You just watch it unfold then minor tweaks and voila!