Friday, January 05, 2007

Arthur

Arthur, smudge-painted by Mary Stebbins Taitt. Click image to view larger.

see the originals at betterphoto.com. Click on read photo discussion.Posted by Picasa

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had an American friend in Austin who had the same type of parrot. The name of the parrot was capullo, if I remember well. When Tom was not at home, Capullo used to tell me about his phone conversations, if you see what I mean :-))

Anonymous said...

I forgot to say that I found your painting wonderful! How did you do it? In a traditional manner or with one your magic tools that fascinate me. How can I find more information on the took you use most often?

Thank you, Mary.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Hi Marie, thank you for all your comments. I did this with a smudge tool in Photoshop. If you would like more information about using it, let me know.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Funny the things parrots will say, LOL! This one belongs to my son and daughter-in-law, Neil and Laura.

Anonymous said...

Having a parrot is one of my dreams. I love them. I know they are noisy and not always very clean but they are so funny. I would spend my days listening to what they have to tell me. Their memory is incredible.

Have you heard of the story I mentioned on my blog? One of my commentators (?) thinks that the image of the Christ lets her think the parents are fundamentalist Christians? Do you think so ?

I have Photoshop or an equivalent. I have not used it yet. I also have Fireworks. I dont know how to make a photo look a bit like a painting....

Have a nice weekend.
Marie

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I have a cockateil and have had several of those and several parakeets, but I have never had a parrot. My cockateil talks quite a bit.

I am not sure I understand the image of Christ question.

I don't know fireworks at all.

But I can tell you how to do this on Photoshop--it is easy but time consuming.

1)take a photo that you would like to transform into a "painting"--choose one that will look nice when painted and is not too complicated.

2)Make all the adjustments necessary to make it look as good as possible--increase the contrast and saturation a little, and sharpen it. If you need help with this, let me know.

3)increase the size of the picture if necessary. Also, adding some noise makes the brush strokes more visible but takes more time to clean up afterwards. Let me know if you need help with these steps.

4)Then, using the smudge tool, set at a brush size of 10 (or whatever works) and a strength of 40, brush as if you were painting the picture. To make it look right, you have to do the whole picture which takes a LONG time.

You can set the brush to darken or lighten to emphasize various parts and make them show up better and change the brush size to fit smaller or larger areas.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much, Mary. I'll see if the software I have installed in my computer works in the same way :-))

The picture of the Christ is in little Ashley's photo, on right-hand side. Have you heard of Ashley's and Ashley's parents' sad story?

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I saw the picture, but I did not understand enough of the story.