Background
An avid traveler who first realized his artistic talent at the age of six, Canadian born Yves Lanthier spent some time freelancing in Europe and Asia before finding his niche among the Florida arts community.

His first major contract included 15 other artists and a year and half spent painting art in a 30,000 square foot house. More recently, Mr. Lanthier was hired to complete a major art job in a corridor of the Florida home of Canadian singer Celine Dion.

Currently, Mr. Lanthier runs a successful art business in Florida. In May, 1999, his studio Salon D’Yves Lanthier held its grand opening, near Montreal, Canada, where on display is a collection of close to 40 of his digital works of art.

The Concept
Inspired by his travels to Europe, Mr. Lanthier desired to create a highly detailed graphic design with the appearance of a serene oil painting. To achieve an authentic look, Mr. Lanthier wanted to reproduce in Corel PHOTO-PAINT® a photograph he had taken in Italy.

There were many obstacles that had to be overcome, the biggest being ensuring that the depth of field was given proper attention.

“The challenge was to give View on the Bay the depth of being shadowed under a trellis while it was sunny outside and on the bay, with a strong mountain background,” said Mr. Lanthier.

“Not having a great amount of sky to assist with the depth of field was the hardest part. It was important to get it as close as possible, without overdoing it.”

How he did it
In Yves’ own words …

For View on the Bay, I used Corel PHOTO-PAINT to reproduce and redesign a travel photograph from Italy. First I scanned in the photograph, then using a pressure sensitive tablet I sketched over it, using only the parts of the image that I wanted. I then drew additional changes to achieve at a final layout.

Once this process was complete, I made a custom paint brush, and picked colors with the eye dropper tool from the actual picture. I designed several brushes and used some preset brushes for shading colors and highlighting important areas I used special effects such as Orbits and Transparency—these features, I found, achieved much more than a regular brush.

Then I went in with my pen and painted in strokes, and blended the colors together—like I would do with a regular paint brush.

The results
The final result is an image with the feel of a smooth oil painting, and the detail of a design created in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. The depth of field Mr. Lanthier aspired to achieve is very evident.

The mountains in the background are serene, the veranda under the trellis seems cool and welcoming, the bay—crisp and calm. View on the Bay, in fact, was so successful, the artist considers it one of his greatest accomplishments to date.

The image was also chosen as a monthly winner in 1998’s Corel World Design Contest.