Lattice Fence and Stone Path (Digitally Modified and Posterized)

Lattice Fence and Stone Path (Digitally Modified and Posterized)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

On Tuesday, I went to a plein air painting workshop in Concord, NH, and did a little watercolor painting of this scene, a lattice fence and stone walkway at the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art. I posted my painting here on Tuesday, and yesterday I posted the reference photo that I took of the scene after I finished painting. But I decided that I liked the photo for its own sake, and tonight decided to see what I could do with it. I started by increasing the saturation in iPhoto. Then I opened the image in Painter and used cut and paste to replace three big plastic bags of mulch with some foliage. I also used a combination of cut-and-paste and digital pastel to eliminate some stray pieces of wood, flower-pots, and other items that were distractions from the main composition. (I even covered up some folding chairs that were visible through the lattice fence.) Then I used a little bit of digital pastel to make the grass just a tiny bit greener. I also put a very gentle green color overlay over the branches of the dead tree in the background. The last thing I did was to posterized the whole image, using trial and error to find just the right level.