11/13/21
As soon as I saw this carton cowboy and his horse cowboy by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay, I knew I had to use them in a composite of some sort. I ended up posting them as a PFCC starter image the first Monday in September. The other members put them in a variety of western scenes, mostly green nature, but I felt I had to use a desert scene.
I started with a blue solid color adjustment layer for a sky, then I added a couple of layers painted with cloud brushes from Aaron Blaise. I then added a new layer and painted the bottom with a sand color - a texture overlay effect gives it the grainy look of actual sand. The rail fence and cacti are from PixelSquid.
After I masked out the background from the horse and cowboy, I had to build the shadows. Ground shadows are fairly easy - a dark, very narrow, slightly blurred color patch between the subject and the substrate. Yes, my biology background is showing. The cast shadow is a whole ‘nother creature. Sometimes on a simple subject, I can make a selection of a subject and put a new layer under the subject, fill the selection with a dark color on multiply mode. Once that’s done, I can use free transform to warp the shadow shorter and to one side, blur it and lower the opacity. I ended up having to paint these in. Happily the PixelSquid objects come with shadows.
Then, I had to find a suitable foreground subject. I thought about a gunslinger, but ended up finding a cartoon bull on Pixels squid. With the look on his face, I’m glad I’m not wearing red.
Take care and stay well!
All material and images © Marie Rediess, cREEations Photography & Design, Algonac, Mi.
No reproduction allowed without specific written permission.