My castle retreat

fluffybunny · **Posted:** Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:53 am **(#1)**

I came across this photo today that I took a few years back from Mt Buffalo, Victoria, Australia.
I decided to use it as the basis of this creation I knocked up this afternoon.
Hope you enjoy as much as I did creating it.

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

That is beautiful fluffy...Did you use the iwarp for all those mountains?

AnMal · **Posted:** Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:07 pm **(#3)**

fluffybunny: :wh

- that really rocks! i love the colours you use and the imaginative jump you took between that photo and what we see in the painting. love the road marked out by little lights too - i really hope those are not visitors from the village bringing torches, as in beauty and the beast :hehe

.

Oregonian · **Posted:** Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:15 pm **(#4)**

What fun, FluffyBunny. Love it all but particularly love that you put car lights traveling the highway to the castle. :jumpclap

fluffybunny · **Posted:** Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:05 pm **(#5)**

Quote:

I really want to know how you did this.

I hope you can appreciate that some of us simple folk are more experimenters than experts. I have some favourite techniques that I have used and enjoyed, but for me it's more about the mood I am in, then letting creativity lead me down a meandering path/labyrinth of ideas/thoughts testing different filters/layer modes/colours etc. as I go.

My 'undo' function gets a serious workout during this process

Now remembering which steps finally made it into the posted image is the struggle.

Let's begin... my mood at the time was a little dark, sombre. I felt like retreating to somewhere secluded/safe. I remembered the photo and the path heading into the distance. Imagined a castle, a safe place at the end of the path. No 'my' castle at the end of the path...

Cropped the original photo.
Added a castle.
Added 'my' initials to the door.
Extended the original path to the door.

Added a purple ground layer with layer mode set to Hue.
Added a purple sky layer made from Solid Noise coloured and set to Multiply.

Sprinkled fairy dust along the path creating the sparkle layer. Brush - G_Sparks.
Added Outer Glows using the Layer Effects filter.
That finished the construction phase.

Now the experimenting began... I won't bore you with those extended details.
Finally ended up with a simple G'mic Dream Smoothing.

Adjusted the brightness/contrast to darken the mood.
Pasted the original sparkled path and FB initials onto the G'mic Dream Smoothing layer.

By this time my mood had lightened considerably with my satisfaction of my work.
I imagined the sparkled path to be warmth and light flowing into my castle and bursting from the turrets, so out came the G_Sparks brush again.

Phew! I do remember trying and liking a layer mode set to Addition somewhere and there may have been a slight Bump Mapping too.
I am sure I did not cover everything, but these are just ramblings and not intended to be a tutorial.

I hope that helps. :oops:

fluffybunny · **Posted:** Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:09 pm **(#6)**

All day? I was sleeping, it is just morning for me now... you must be located on the other side of our planet in relation to me. For me it is 10:39 am on 9 April as I type this message.

fluffybunny · **Posted:** Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:07 am **(#7)**

Oregonian wrote:

What fun, FluffyBunny. Love it all but particularly love that you put car lights traveling the highway to the castle. :jumpclap

Glad it amused you

AnMal wrote:

... i really hope those are not visitors from the village bringing torches, as in beauty and the beast :hehe

.

I hope not either

molly wrote:

That is beautiful fluffy...Did you use the iwarp for all those mountains?

No molly, just Dream Smoothing from G'MIC, and some Brightness/Contrast adjustments. Glad you liked it.

Erisian · **Posted:** Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:25 am **(#8)**

Can I come to fluffybunny castle? I'll bring my fairies along - they'll love it! Nice work fb.

he4rty · **Joined:** Aug 30, 2012 **Posts:** 2174

Fluffy - really nice work, the castle definately has that disney fairytale feel about it and the colours are great.