Today I'm introducing the first of some new painted, scenic backgrounds in my Wildlife Masterpieces series I'm working on.  This background features more painterly grass with a nice, thick canvas texture as well.  It's a great background for you to use with your zoo photos, to take the wild animals out of captivity and place them in a scene where they look more natural.  You can also use this background {which is made available in 10 color tones, by the way} with your domestic animals, birds and even people subjects if you want to get really creative. :)

I used Wildlife Masterpieces 1 Scenic Background with both of the wild cat images below.  And for those of you who wanted a tutorial on how to work with my grass backgrounds, I've provided a new video below just for you!  I hope you enjoy the video and using this background with your favorite subjects.

Like this scenic background?  Buy the collection of 10 here.  Commercial Use OK.

If you love creating BEACHY artwork, you'll adore this mini series texture collection, all featuring the same color tones to create a beautiful series of images.  The collection of bird art below was made using this new Beachy mini series texture package.  Each photograph had the background removed to reveal the texture underneath.  The texture was also placed on top of each image as a soft light layer at 100%.  This soft light layer was completely desaturated in order to allow the color tones to remain the same for the final merged images.  Each bird photo layer was also ran through a light preset using Topaz Impression in order to give the birds a more "painterly" look for the final art.

When I started The Daily Texture project in late 2014, I had no idea it would become so popular!  It's been a great adventure and a fabulous learning experience for me.  It's also been incredibly fulfilling, to create these resources to help other photographers and artists advance their craft and creativity.  It's definitely something I want to continue, but I've learned during the past 7 weeks of health challenges I've had that doing it all myself is not always feasible when life throws a few curve balls my way.  I've also learned what you, the customers, seem to love the most, based on what is selling the best -- which is packages and collections.

Therefore, I've decided at this point to cease the production of the individual daily textures, and to focus solely on  the larger packages, small series groupings {as seen earlier in this blog post}, and also more scenic backgrounds {something I am asked about almost daily!}.  The individual daily textures on the site will remain here for sale for those who have yet to acquire them.  But from this point forward, the new releases will be fewer between, but will be in the form of groups/collections/packages.  

As a licensed artist, one of the things I have learned is manufacturers like to license work in groups of two or four images which are alike in color and style.  As I continue on making textures and backgrounds, I plan to focus heavily on this concept, and produce many more of these "mini series collections" to help facilitate more licensing agreements for myself and hopefully for the other artists licensing their work as well.

I appreciate each and every one of you who have used and supported the daily textures since 2014!  I do hope you'll choose to continue on this journey with me and that you'll find uses for these new mini series, the scenic backgrounds, and the larger collections as well.  I may create a random single texture from time to time, and I will probably upload those to the free textures section on the website as my gift to everyone, too! :)

InJoy,

Jai Johnson

Today's Daily Texture is perfect for those who love lilac, lavender and purple shades!  Not only will this texture work well with the new lilacs we have blooming here, but I found it also worked surprisingly well with this tiny songbird.  I used the texture as a background for the bird and also as a multiply layer on top set to about 33% opacity {with some of that layer masked off the eye to keep it bright}.  Then I duplicated the texture layer and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at 100%.

If you love heavy canvas and strong painterly textures, you'll adore these two Daily Textures!  Seasonal Glow 1 and 2 feature both traits, and are fabulous for blending with a variety of subjects.  I used both as backgrounds only for a couple of my lion photos to give them interest and a powerful presence.  I did not use this texture on top at all...only as a background after masking away the lion's backgrounds.  You can also use these as a base to begin your own painting, working your subject into the existing painting if you desire.  And of course, you can also take your photo+texture merged image into Topaz Impression to create an entire new painting of your own!  The possibilities are endless!

How about a mix of spring colors?  Today's Daily Texture is a bouquet of beautiful paint, all mixed up to give you that feeling of a big spring garden. I paired it with this photo of our wild neighborhood kitty cat, both as a background and as a soft light layer on top at about 55%.  The yellow coloring in the texture really seemed to tie in with her eyes well. :)  After I merged those layers together, I decided to take this image one step farther and turn it into a painting using Topaz Impression.  Both images are shown below.

I was all prepared to add some Roses or Azaleas in with this Daily Texture...but Tilda stole my heart with her recent photo, and I felt she deserved to become a focal point.  So here she is, my pet Mockingbird, the female, Matilda.  Tilda for short.  She was perched in my holly bush, which looked really beautiful.  Her background, however, was less than stellar, with some harsh light and shadows.  I used the texture as a background first.  Then I used the texture as a soft light layer on top at 55%.  After merging the textures and photo, I darkened the bottom half of the image slightly to give the holly leaves a bit more definition.  Then I took the image into Topaz Impression and gave it a very slight oil glaze paint filter to smooth things out a bit.  Now, Tilda is ready for Spring!