Introducing Painted Scenic Backgrounds

Introducing...Painted Scenic Backgrounds

As photographers, we all have those moments when we capture a perfect shot of one of our favorite subjects, only to discover later, the background is a mess.  Or there's something annoying...like a tree coming out of an animal's head {yes, this happens to me more than you will ever know!}.  Some things can be cloned out...some cannot without making things worse.  

Blending a texture with the subject and getting rid of that background issue is one way to keep your beautiful subject and make a neat piece of art.  But sometimes, I find myself wanting something MORE.  

Today, I'm introducing you to our new Scenic Backgrounds category.  This category features my digitally hand-painted images which all begin with my photographs of mostly country and nature scenes.  Textures are blended with the photos first, then I paint them.  Some work well...some don't.  But the ones that do, well those are the ones you'll find in this new category.

Not only will you find new, full backgrounds to use, but I'm providing them in a variety of color tones!  For example, the original background for Lake 1 {the background behind the Canadian Goose} was autumn toned.  I created several color tone variations of this scene {9, to be exact}.  After blending my goose in with the original autumn toned one, I discovered the color tones in the bird didn't really work well with the autumn colored lake scene.  So under the bird -- on top of the autumn lake scene -- I imported a few of the other lake scenes to see if another worked better.  And it did!  This one with the green tones matched my goose much better!  So that's the one I went with in my final art.

These backgrounds are great for creating composites with one or more photos, as well.  In the image below, I used two different photos -- one of my husband photographing something with his phone that I captured on one of our nature outings, and another of the bald eagle in flight.  I masked away the backgrounds on both photos and positioned the subjects on top of the painted background.  Then I worked on blending them in with the background, and finally, I did the same thing as I did with the goose...I ended up choosing one of the other colors of this scene which went with the two subjects a bit better.

So if you enjoy the textures, but want to add just a little more excitement to your art, you might be interested in some of these new backgrounds.  You can also add quotes to them, make them into greeting cards, use them as a background for other finished art pieces or as a background for advertisements for your other art, special events, etc.  I hope you'll have as much fun using them as I have making them!

Check out these first two backgrounds in the new "Scenic Backgrounds" category.  
More will be added soon!