From Photo to Graphic Art

I had the idea to use some photos I've taken as inspiration for graphic art, so I tried it!  Here's one photo I started with.

It's a photo of a railroad crossing signal with a kind of vintage feel to it.  I tried to translate some of the elements of the photo into graphic art in this piece.

I'll admit right off the bat that this piece of graphic art is a little bit random and a kind of...interesting collage and conglomeration of things!  But hopefully, you can see little glimpses of the photo in the piece, like the blue sky vs. the blue background, the criss-cross design on the graphic art piece that is similar to the pattern on the yellow box in the right side of the photo, and the X shape that mimics the railroad crossing sign.  I also put in the mustard yellow boxes in hopes that they'd look similar to the speakers (or whatever they are...) in the photo.

Okay, next up... this photo I took in Nashville, TN.  I just loved the color combination of all the newspaper boxes, and also the colorful wall.

I used a similar background idea on the graphic design item I created, and I tried to incorporate the colors of the newspaper boxes into the multi-colored dots on the art piece.

And yes, that flower pattern is the same as what's on my current blog header.  Just getting extra mileage out of things there.  But back to the design... other than the dots and the striped background, I pretty much just added the words in to match.  There wasn't any real correlation in the photo for the words, but that's okay. :)

My next piece comes from a closeup shot I took of the fringe of a scarf.  I love this shot because it was one of the first times I really experimented with focus effects after I got my new camera.

I used a pretty similar overall color scheme on the design project, but I used a minor magenta color for the background.

I also drew little doodles that are wispy looking like the fringe on the scarf, and then added in words in the blank space.  The composition of the graphic design piece is actually pretty similar to the photo.

The last photo I used for inspiration is a beach photo.

The resulting graphics project is a pretty loose interpretation of the photo - it has a similar set of color choices, though.

I like the colors in the photo, though, and I think they give the graphic design piece a soothing feeling.

This ended up being a really fun little self-challenge!  I'd love to hear your thoughts on my designs!  Do you have any comments or suggestions for me?  Just leave a comment and I'll be thrilled to hear from you.