Nice work, Paul.

Peter,

That's a cool project - indeed, very ambitious I look forward to seeing your progress.

And welcome to the community. There are lot of great people around here who have helped me tremendously to learn some of the intricacies of SU. My advice is to feel free to ask for help and advice - there are many here who are gracious with their time and helpful with their expertise.

Peace,
Nick

I dig it Tom, thanks for sharing your progression. I like the sun rays - I love to see the sun shine through the clouds, it just makes me happy.

"...as he picked up his hammer and saw."

A step in the "right" direction, Tom, imho.

Tom, I like the increased contrast, but don't like the blown out whites in the sky and tree area.

Are you doing this in Photoshop?

If so, a suggestion: experiment with curves to drop the darker colors while maintaining the lighter colors. This achieves the increased contrast without blowing out the top end.

cool effect, though. I like it.

Fletch, indeed it's always good to meet new friends in your neighborhood!

Thanks for the reference to your tut. Very informative. I will definitely review this.

Fletch, great work! It's cool that you're doing work in Haiti. I have some good friends who have spent many years working with a school organization there and I had the opportunity to meet the Haitian man who started the whole thing. Very inspiring to see bright lights in such a dark place.

Could you please expound on this statement?

@unknownuser said:

I used this HDR probe and used the alpha mask from KT to pop in my building onto my background.
I love photomatch/KT alpha mask technique... works well for me. very fast. In KT you can render the alpha mask of any selection w/out actually rendering the image... so you can render the alpha at very hi-res in only a few seconds.

It sounds great, but I'm afraid I don't understand exactly how to do what you're saying. I would be very interested to understand this process.

Could there be a visibility issue with the Park Ridge squeezed back between the pillars? (can you see it from 45 degrees?)

btw, to paint in the light, a useful PS (Windows) method I use often is as follows:

hold Alt while clicking the "new layer" button (or file menu>layer>new layer, or Ctrl+Shift+N), select "soft light" mode and check the 50% gray box. then you can use your brush tool on this layer with black to darken or white to lighten. in this case, I used white at about 20% opacity to paint in the light streaks.

added a little colorful picture in the corner in question. lightened the ceiling and added some lines to break up the vastness (a little trick I learned from someone regarding a parking lot:). lightened the wall on the left a little too - could maybe use more lightening... and bumped the contrast a bit via curves - similar effect to levels tool but a little more control, I think - I get a better result this way imo.

I was thinking too that adding some texture (i.e. tiles) on the ceiling could break it up a bit too...

Tina, as evidenced by my inability to articulate in my last post, I too have a lot to learn about lighting. I'm also interested to learn about this from anyone who may have some more experience and specific analysis/suggestions.

I dig the dynamic/angular presentation. The black lines frame it nicely. Nice presentation - nice flashes of color here and there - and the logo probably adds some life too.

If I had to stretch for a suggestion... something is ambiguously not pleasing about the colors/lighting... Maybe it's the color of the walls or the dead ceiling. The upper left hand corner seems dim. Sorry for being so vague. And who knows what it looks like on your monitor as compared to mine...

Nice work, thanks for sharing.

Tina,

Thanks for the illustrative example. That's helpful.

Thanks for the helpful and encouraging suggestions everyone It gives me some new ideas to try out next time around.

Tina, when you talk about depth of the building and roof, do you mean via shading?

Cheffey, I was wondering if anyone picked up on that. Funny story, I have some friends who were on a bus trip that went through Montgomery and they convinced everyone that they should stop to see Flea Market Montgomery. I guess Sammy made a "grand" entrance up on a balcony and made his way down to the group on a big staircase. He had called a local news station and they came and interviewed one of the guys from the bus. Sammy kept up the show the whole time. The story reminded me of Slurms McKenzie from Futurama (the story of a worn out star behind the glamorous front, a slave to the company).

what I'm working on.

c&c welcome - as always, I appreciate the many trained and critical eyes roving around here.

I've got to give honorable mention to my favorite old beater - the '86 Country Squire. It was just too fun, especially in the winter, to not worry about driving over the occasional curb, or through the woods, or ramming the occasional snow bank. And oh, the fun of rear-wheel drive in the Wisconsin winters - one time I actually took a phone call start to finish while spinning donuts in a huge open parking lot. Immature, you say? Yes, I suppose so, but oh boy was it fun
Now I've got to apologize to those of you who are doing your part to save the planet. I'm afraid I am not doing my part with this one... My dad and I have been working together on our '69 Mustang for 17 years now - he bought it when I was 10 years old. We plan to paint it this winter. We've fixed or replaced just about everything but the rear-end gears and the paint. Rebuilt the engine a few years ago (351 Cleveland - for those of the metric persuasion, that's about 5.85 Liters after after a slight bore and stroke job) and put in a Tremec T5WC manual trans. We decided a long time ago that it's better to get the mechanicals in order before painting it up to look pretty. Nothing against those who choose to do it in a different order, but I didn't want to have the beautiful paint job with blue smoke coming out the tailpipe... or sitting broken down on the side of the road (though I had my share of those experiences too). I've learned a lot over the years from my dad while working on it. Some more details for those who might care to know: I estimate it's putting out 360hp and 390ft-lbs torque - never had it on a dyno or timed it at a track. My dad and I also designed and fabricated Shelby-style tractions bars.
Before the local activists track me down and let the air out of my tires, I will note that I often drive my wife's car to work to offset my mileage at least a little bit. And I ride my bike whenever I can, too. The car is an '05 Hyundai Elantra. It's dark blue - if you want to see it, type the following into Google image search "dark blue 2005 hyundai elantra". The bike is a Yukon Giant - nothing special, but it's been good to me and is tough enough to survive 5 years on the UW-Madison campus (45,000 students makes for a lot of bikes on the bike racks and I've seen plenty of bike skeletons laying chained to a rack due to negligence or vandalism).

Peace,
Nick

I like the look. How did you achieve the splotchy colored effect?

Cool! Nice work. Very creative. He could use a tough-guy sidearm, too.
You are very talented and creative. I love too see "mixed-brain" work like this (technical & artistic). You obviously put some time into this project. Though I don't know many cowboys around here who would show off their pasty white legs He must really be a tough guy to get away with that cowboy loin cloth. What happens it flips up in his face on the highway? j/k

Dylan, James, thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.

Kris, thanks for your tips and encouraging words.

Btw, I found the thread I was thinking of - it was Canoek who had posted a watercolor process. I think I'll give that a shot sometime soon - I like the look. Here's the thread: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=125&t=5624

the straight up color version...