Case Study: December Wallpaper

Although I’ve had quite a lot of requests, I’ve never really given a fair shot at writing up a tutorial/case study before. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t see myself as the teacher type or that I hate trying to write about what I’ve made. When creating my December calendar wallpaper, I thought it would be a great candidate to at least give it a shot once. So, let me try and break down how it came to be. Oh, you can click each to see a larger sample: 

01. Starting with a stock photo of a winter house on a blank canvas. 

02. Removed the trees, light post, extra fence section and extended the driveway a bit. 

03. Removed all signs from the house and barn 

04. Added in extra windows, candles in windows, wreath on the barn and misc clean up.

05. Color correction and scratch/grunge elements. Cleaned up the road. Also extended some elements of the house to give it a more hand drawn look. 

06. Added in trees to the background so it wasn’t against a stark white background. Also added in some misc paint splatters and texture. 

07. More color adjustments, grunge elements and splatters. 

Final image: The final wallpaper with the calendar element. You can download this (without the calendar element) from my site.