My in-laws got me a WACOM tablet for my birthday, and I got to open it and start playing with it while we visited during the Thanksgiving holiday. I also got Corel Painter X, which is quite the potent tool once you develop a knack for how to use it with Photoshop and a WACOM.

So, on Thanksgiving morning, the day after I opened the gift, my mom-in-law was drinking coffee on her back patio and called me out to see something. They’ve got a really nice wooded back yard and when I got to the patio, she pointed out a gorgeous Autumn morning scene with sunlight streaking through the branches and asked me if I could take a digital photo of the moment to put on her computer desktop. I grabbed my camera, ran outside, and took several shots. I don’t claim to be a photographer in any artistic sense – but this was pretty much a no-brainer shoot.

The best of the group ended up being this one:

Not a bad image, all in all. But when my mom-in-law started gushing about how she wanted to use it to make note cards and wall art, I started thinking I could use my new tablet and software to give her something even more special.

So, I enhanced the colors a bit in Photoshop, then fired up Painter X and set it up with an oil-paint scheme that one of the tutorials suggested. After a couple hours of fiddling with the pen, I had something to show for it.

I ended up with something I’m really pretty proud of:

Here’s a link to a detail of part of the image at 100%:

The topper to this whole thing is that Leah and I decided to upload the oil painted version to Kodak Galleries and have them print it on a 24×30 textured canvas and give it to my in-laws for Christmas. It is a bit expensive, but we received it in the mail yesterday and when I opened it up my jaw dropped. It looks SO GOOD!

So yeah, I’ve got to figure out a way to market this. Because, frankly, I think I’m decently good at it, and I’m just starting to learn. This could be a nice addition to the tools in my freelance kit.