Kingly White Cat
The Request
This was one of those times I was just browsing through the pet subreddits looking for things to practice photo-painting. This gorgeous kitty was posted with a title of
“I don’t ask for worship. I expect it.”
As a “crazy cat lady” myself, I am all too familiar with this attitude from our feline friends, and burst out laughing. I decided to dress him for the sentiment!
The Results
These silly portraits of pets as royalty, or antique military are always popular. These days, you can get a pretty decent one out of AI generators without much experience, but your image will have size and resolution limits.
I do use AI as part of my process, but in order to make my images large enough to print full size on a canvas, I usually start by making a photorealistic version of whatever image I want to paint. I then enlarge that image to whatever size I need it, but I don’t have to worry that it will get pixelated, because the next step is to hand paint the whole thing!
This is the photorealistic image that I generated using Gemini to start my painting process.
Painted Version
I’m a digital image editor, not a “real” artist, so I don’t just start with a blank canvas and make my interpretation of the photo. I use a program called Corel Painter to give the photo a treatment called “photo painting”.
Unlike traditional artist paintings, I actually paint directly over the original image on a separate layer, using special digital “paintbrushes”. These are essentially designed to pick up an averaged shade of color from the photo beneath, every single time you make a brush stroke. I use these brushes to retexture the photo with strokes that appear to have depth and bristle marks, giving the photo a surprisingly realistic painted appearance! Depending on the brushes used, the image can be almost as photorealistic as the photo, or completely impressionistic. Once I am done, the original photo is removed and you are left with the painting.
This has advantages over traditional painting.
- True to the photo – Because I am pulling color and shapes directly from the image, it will be much more true-to-life than you might get from an artist creating freehand
- Fast – From what I’ve heard from traditional painters, a painting like this would multiple days or even weeks, depending on the size. I can create a 4000x4000px, 4k image in about 2 hours.
- Easy – While it does take a bit of technical skill and an artistic eye, I believe anyone could learn to photo-paint, whereas not everyone has the natural talent to be a traditional artist.
- Bargain – If you can afford to hire a real, traditional painter who is skilled enough to create what you need, then go for it! But most people that is not in the budget. For a direct photo-to painting conversion, without AI changes, I charge as little as $10
