High Tide at the Sand Dunes

Back into my painting mode with what I envision the Sand Dunes in Indiana would look with a high tide. This image was completely painted in Photoshop using a basic white Canvas Texture as the background above my Background layer and set to the creamy cloud color using a Color Fill Adjustment. Layer. Next the ground areas were painted in using the various flower brushes, including several I created. On a layer below the flowers, the water was painted in. A bird from Obsidian Dawn was added – actually 4 birds were in the group but 3 were masked out. It looked pretty good at this point. Then Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Restyle Lavender gray preset was applied on a stamped layer on top (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) to create a little bit different color palette. Duplicated the layer opened Topaz Texture Effects 2 – just added Diffusion section and used a mask to only apply the effect to the background plants; and Texture section using one of my own textures and removed effect from water with a mask. On layer above filled in a few more plants and added some color the the sky with a fog brush. To add a little warmth to the water, used a Sunbeam brush set to a low opacity. On another stamped layer, Topaz Lens Effects Fog 1 Filter was applied to soften the middle ground of image just a little. Last step was to add Kyle T. Webster’s Gentle Glaze layer style with Fill set to 0 and painted over the water areas to give a really nice painted effect in the water and sky areas. Painting in Photoshop is really fun!…..Digital Lady Syd