Dabbling in Photo Illustration Part 3

 Choosing to blend texture into an illustration by using photos doesn't come natural to me - she who feels the need to control everything with a pencil. But I have to admit that photo texture eliminates a lot of painstaking detail work.  While I'm still a sucker for a nice hand-drawn pattern, I understand the need for me to adapt to the faster pace and clean lines of the new visual world. If I want to spend days on a pattern, that's days of my life I can't get back. This was kind of fun, and got me out of the drawing seat to take pictures, which is good for me. Trust me. I need to get out more.

Basically, I took a bunch of pictures of rusty, mechanical things, like our air conditioning units that need replacing ...

Oh look. My shoes.

This doesn't even work anymore. It just takes up space in my yard.

After I loaded the pictures into photoshop. I cut, transformed, and pasted the textures over the areas of the environment that I felt needed some "spacecrafting."

I used blending options for the layers to integrate the photos into the original design. Usually a color burn or a simple overlay was enough to get the pieces to look like they were fixed in the scene. Sometimes I had to play with the opacity. 

Can you tell which part of my air conditioner went where?

After I was happy with the background, I added the bridge.

Then added some shadows and effects to the layers.

And then I had some fun with the scene outside the window.  NEXT