jp1

My mom emailed me this photo of my dad on a fishing trip in Alaska and I loved it!
But…it was dark, you couldn’t see my dad’s face or much detail in the photo. So my first step was to “turn the lights on” with Totally Rad Actions. Love those!

Then I decided to get artsy with it and paint it into a page.

Let me start by saying I’m so glad we’re not still in the days of photoshop when you had to calculate layers against each other to create effects. And what I’m about to show could also be done with masking… but… this is how I’ve loved painting from the early days in Photoshop. And, as always, there’s no right way to paint just different ways to learn!
So here goes!

Step 1:

jp2

Create a new document [mine is 3600px square]

Drag in your background paper. I used Painted Book Paper Pack.

Open your photo and select the clone brush

Step 2:

jp3

Option + Click [on a mac] in a central area of the image you want to clone
[you will see a crosshair cursor]

And then make you layout the active window

Step 3:

jp4

Make a new layer and select a brush

I used one of my watery brushes and adjusted the settings as shown below

jp5

Then, making sure you’re on a new layer, begin painting!

Step 4:

jp6

 

To add in the vintage documents, I simply repeated the process but instead of sampling from a photo, I sampled from Vintage Text Papers creating new layers each time.

I continued to create new layers and paint in watery splashes and, finally, tucked aBlendable map beneath it all!

Step 5:

jp7

To create the painted look for the word ‘amazing’

Position the word from Thicker Inked Titles and turn off visibility.

Create a new layer.

Hover the cursor over the word thumbnail in the layer palette and command+click
to make the word an active selection. Choose a watery brush and adjust your settings as shown in step 3 and begin painting. I chose a mix of colors.

For ‘catch, dad’ I used the same process but instead of using a watery brush I used the Chalked Photo Masks Brushes for a more distressed look!

Add a few embellishments and you’re done! Simple as that!