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Description
My mother will be remarried in October, and as a wedding present she requested... art. I was thrilled to oblige. I am providing 3 distinct groups of work, which do not directly correlate in style, mood, or feeling... but which all are centered around the same theme as the wedding itself.

This theme retells the classic tale of Don Quixote. Robert, my future father-in-law, has Hispanic roots and is partial to the Spanish well-meaning anti-hero. In their version of the story, however, Quixote actually DOES rescue his Dulcinea, and she is more than just a fancy of his imagination.

The original request was for a set of clip art to be printed on the service programs. Since no one was quite sure of exactly what they wanted, numerous suggestions popped up. One included "Draw our faces on their bodies." I ultimately settled on an artistic style for the clip art that would not allow such detail, but I couldn't keep the concept from my mind.

I wanted to present them with two poster-sized prints that would allow me more creative expression. This is the first. Due to some feedback I received, I decided to backtrack a bit, and go in a new direction. Overall, I'm glad for the revision. I think I'm more satisfied with the second version, but I really liked this effect too.

I "painted" in the bodies by referencing an old photograph from the "Don Quixote" ballet, and added the face detail from a photograph of the happy couple. I haven't put much time into experimenting with different brush settings, so the brush was just a basic feathered circle, and it turned out quite blurry.

To keep the blurriness from looking bad, I tried to make it look more like a traditional painting by applying the "smudge stick" filter. This worked well, but as comments revealed... wasn't very convincing. You can see that version here: [link]

I ultimately decided to rework the piece by conjuring extra detail, and making my manual strokes more apparent. I achieved this by smudging over the blurry version with sort of a swirly motion. This created a greatly different visual appeal, which I am very happy with. I did apply a filter to the new version, but this time I went with "watercolor" which didn't cover up my strokes, so much as define them.

I have no idea how long this took, as I wasn't keeping track.

Description
My mother will be remarried in October, and as a wedding present she requested... art. I was thrilled to oblige. I am providing 3 distinct groups of work, which do not directly correlate in style, mood, or feeling... but which all are centered around the same theme as the wedding itself.

This theme retells the classic tale of Don Quixote. Robert, my future father-in-law, has Hispanic roots and is partial to the Spanish well-meaning anti-hero. In their version of the story, however, Quixote actually DOES rescue his Dulcinea, and she is more than just a fancy of his imagination.

The original request was for a set of clip art to be printed on the service programs. Since no one was quite sure of exactly what they wanted, numerous suggestions popped up. One included "Draw our faces on their bodies." I ultimately settled on an artistic style for the clip art that would not allow such detail, but I couldn't keep the concept from my mind.

I wanted to present them with two poster-sized prints that would allow me more creative expression. This is the first. Due to some feedback I received, I decided to backtrack a bit, and go in a new direction. Overall, I'm glad for the revision. I think I'm more satisfied with the second version, but I really liked this effect too.

I "painted" in the bodies by referencing an old photograph from the "Don Quixote" ballet, and added the face detail from a photograph of the happy couple. I haven't put much time into experimenting with different brush settings, so the brush was just a basic feathered circle, and it turned out quite blurry.

To keep the blurriness from looking bad, I tried to make it look more like a traditional painting by applying the "smudge stick" filter. This worked well, but as comments revealed... wasn't very convincing. You can see that version here: [link]

I ultimately decided to rework the piece by conjuring extra detail, and making my manual strokes more apparent. I achieved this by smudging over the blurry version with sort of a swirly motion. This created a greatly different visual appeal, which I am very happy with. I did apply a filter to the new version, but this time I went with "watercolor" which didn't cover up my strokes, so much as define them.

I have no idea how long this took, as I wasn't keeping track.