Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Merry Christmas

(click on image to enlarge)

Christmas in Victoria
Computer painting
©2004 Charlene Brown

This is a Christmas card I drew a few years ago using Photoshop.











  
Aiming, as always, for complete accuracy (within reason) I scanned in a map of the City of Victoria (upside down because we are looking south).





I ‘stroked’ the shoreline, and telescoped the foreground (Select>Edit>Free Transform) to lower the viewpoint.






I sketched, filled and stroked the mountains with solid colours and filled the sky and sea with gradients. Then, I cooled the colours shifting everything toward blue. I added features various Brushes, Filters and Fading Modes. Then, I turned this panorama into a night scene by overlaying an indigo/purple gradient at about 30% opacity and adding stars.   
Finally, I painted Christmas lights, and spread them around town with random combinations of pattern stamps – a picky process, but much easier than putting up the real thing.