Manhattan makeover

James Paterson shows you how to transform cityscapes into eye-catching artwork with a combination of blending and selection skills in Affinity

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With their angular lines and bold shapes, architectural photos and cityscapes are the perfect subject for a creative makeover in Affinity Photo. In this project we'll explain how to transform the iconic New York skyline into a bold array of painterly splashes and drips. This involves a cunning combination of selection skills and layer blending.

We begin by preparing our photo of the city, converting it to black and white and boosting contrast so that we have a bold foundation to work with. Once done, we use the Pen tool to isolate each vertical street, so that we can apply different colours to each. This helps to tailor the painterly effect to the image, as the streaks of paint we add will match up with the shapes we create for each street.

You can find lots of free photos of paint streaks online, but there’s something to be said for making your own. Here we painted a few colourful streaks of watercolour paint on a piece of white paper. We kept the streaks in loose, vertical lines then photographed the paper at a low angle. This way, the streaks of paint could match up with the straight lines of New York streets in our photograph.

From here, we can finesse the effect with simple layer skills, adjusting colours and positioning pieces in the puzzle until it all fits together perfectly.

STEP BY STEP CITY SPLATTERS

Transform city scenes into colourful art in Affinity Photo