Niagara Falls @ Twilight: Painting over photo - Critique please

[mitali]

Been using AR for some time now. Tried painting over photo for the first time. Removed lot of tourists from the scene and gave it a impression feel. Need feedback on overall appearance of the painting, effect of flowing water etc. Does it have too photographic look to it? Should it be even more abstract? Views/comments/critiques appreciated.

[Docsmith626]

This piece is excellent. You will find that ArtRage is a good platform for photo-manipulation, postwork on CGI-generated images, creating textures for CGI "materials", compositing images, and other tasks usually thought to be the exclusive relm of PhotoShop. Only in ArtRage, you make the rules.

[Kris]

Painting over is not a technique I have tried yet, but what you have done here makes me want to have a go.
The angular lines on the edge of the waterfall have an art appearance rather than looking like a photograph, and the heavy contrast gives it an almost illustrated comic book style.
Great stuff. If you can do this at a first attempt, then we can look forward to seeing some great work in the future.

[mitali]

Thank you Docsmith626 and Kris for your feedback. You've motivated me to try out more of this .
I love painting in Artrage specially because it gives you that real oil painting effect that a traditional oil on canvas would give.

Kris: You should definitely try it out. I thought painting over a photograph would be much simpler but I was wrong. It took the same amount of time that any other painting would if you started from scratch.

[hypotaxis]

I like it. Whether you make it more impressionistic or not is a matter of taste, of course, but if I do have a comment, it's that the river is in a different style to the town(?) and bridge behind - at least to my eyes. You could play with abstracting the far side of the river and see what you think.

Brett

[mitali]

Bret - Ya it probably makes sense to give the river that effect. I will try it out thanks.

Mitali

[screenpainter]

Beautiful! I like it just as it is. I enjoyed the more impressionist style of the river contrasted with the more modern architecture. Lovely color palette as well.

[BAT]

Very cool.... This is just probably just my thinking cause I have been there many times, but the noise of the falls is very loud, so I would have made the falls (the river is great) with allot more noise, more abstract and turbulent. (If I could) ;-)

[cpoole]

i quite often work over photographs. you can allow the photo to dictate how you finish the piece or just a starting point. Usually after the first hour, i ignore the photo layer completely. this piece has a great graphic feel to it and is quite sucessful.

my question to you is the decision to have the water all in white. water by its nature reflects and manipulates light. the reds in the rest of the piece and the starkness of the white in the water portion provide a real contrast. what would happen if you allowed the reds to play as reflections into the water?

[Henry Mills]

I agree, painting over a photo is not an easy as it sounds. We as artist must breath life into every line/brush stroke. AR has helped me to paint, where 30 years and 75 self-help instruction books have not.

I am over the fear of the blank canvas, so I now say "bring it on, give me a new image I CAN paint".

Thank you Docsmith626 and Kris for your feedback. You've motivated me to try out more of this .
I love painting in Artrage specially because it gives you that real oil painting effect that a traditional oil on canvas would give.

Kris: You should definitely try it out. I thought painting over a photograph would be much simpler but I was wrong. It took the same amount of time that any other painting would if you started from scratch.