Paintings from Photographs

I recently spent a day with my friend and creative catalyst, Michael Fairchild. While at his home, he showed me a photograph that had been manipulated to look like a painting. He had created this transformed image for a client who wanted a “painting” of a local feature to hang in his living room.

Although I have made many manipulated photographic images since my introduction to digital photography, I had not specifically aimed for a “painterly” look. Several weeks after my visit with Michael and after the idea to pursue this approach had germinated, I decided that I would experiment with some of the more basic filters that come supplied with Adobe Photoshop and see what I could come up with. Michael had used the “dry brush” filter for his effort, so I started with that. Over time, I layered different densities of dry brush, ink outlines, underpainting, watercolor, and find edges to come up with my results. As you will see, I haven’t settled into a particular technique. Each of these treatments is quite different from the others.

All of the images in this book are the product of my explorations over the last couple of weeks.

David Ramage
March 9, 2006