Painting pictures and creating art form your photographs is not all that complex and I find it to be a very rewarding aspect of my photography. I run the full spectrum from realistic to abstract and beyond. Blurs, montages, paintings, fractals and more are all pieces of art from photography that I create in my digital studio. I used to be shy about calling these images art because I didn’t feel that the level of skill was anywhere near what a real painter could do. I still feel that way, but a painter friend of mine said if I create it regardless of how, it’s still art and a painting…own it! So, I am going to go with that and I continue to make art from photography!

I’ve been making digital art from photography for a long time now and wow things are quite a lot different these days…mostly it so much easier!! The power of computers these days makes what once was a very time consuming chore, go by in the blink of an eye. Of course the output quality has grown dramatically as well. When I began I always used images that were somehow defective…out of focus, feet chopped off, poorly exposed pretty much anything that kept me from using it a photograph. I still do that from time to time, but now I also use images that I like in their own right.

I use a lot of different tools in my digital art studio, but for these paintings everything runs through photoshop. Sorry, Lightroom, I have to use all of the muscles in photoshop to make this work. A lot of this can be done in Elements and some in Lightroom, but for the most part it’s all about photoshop.

Here are a couple of my latest pieces of art from photography. For these paintings, the plugin from Alien Skin, Snap Art, provided the majority of my brushwork.

click on an image for a full size view

 

Bird Art - Red-billed Hornbill painting created by Jeff Wendorff

Bird Art – Red-billed Hornbill painting

Wildlife Art - Baby Raccoon created by Jeff Wendorff

Wildlife Art – Baby Raccoon

Wildlife Art - Charging Tiger created by Jeff Wendorff

Wildlife Art – Charging Tiger

Wildlife Art - Mock Charged by a Grizzly Bear created by Jeff Wendorff

Wildlife Art – Mock Charged by a Grizzly Bear

 

This Western Kingbird was painted with Snap Art and then I used photoshop to add more color and texture. To get that extra texture, I used layer blending tricks to get what I wanted.

 

Bird Art - Western Kingbird created by Jeff Wendorff

Bird Art – Western Kingbird

There is a relatively new app for the iPad and iPhone (not sure about other mobile devices) called TangledFx and I’ve become somewhat addicted to it. I prefer working on the iPad and when this program get’s it right the paintings are amazing! Well I think so anyway. Here are a couple for you to see for your self. I bring them back to photoshop for some additional work, but TangledFX provides the brush strokes for these pieces of art from photography.

Wildlife Art - Leaping Coyote created by Jeff Wendorff

Wildlife Art – Leaping Coyote

Nature Art - Showy Milkweed created by Jeff Wendorff

Nature Art – Showy Milkweed

 Art from Photography – Digital Art Gallery

If you would like to see more digital art including wildlife, nature, landscapes and abstracts you can see them online. All of the images are available for sale as either prints or licensed for your various publication needs. Artists feel free to ask about using my photography as reference material. My art from photography portfolio is…HERE.