Here is my Christmas card for 2009 … and what follows is how it came to be …

Almost three years ago, before any of the farmhouse construction began, I had taken a real picture of the building site. I used this as a background in my drafting software when designing the project. When the exterior design work was finished, I used the software’s ray trace renderer to create a likeness of the farmhouse. So, in the first cell of the strip below you find the rendered farmhouse with rendered grass in front of a photo of the real site and trees. Next, I used various brushes to add snow in the air and on the ground. I then went back and made a copy of the first layer and removed everything but the building. This was layered on top of the snow to bring it back as the focal point. I added a new layer and outlined the roof. This layer received more brushes of snow. I also added a layer with piles of snow around the building with small amount pushed up to the building and the porch. The final layer of snow was added to the tops of the trees. With the image complete, I added the greetings and finally the border. In truth, the greetings are four layers – one each for the lines of text and similarly for the snow caps and shadows for the text. The border is actually three layers – one for the woven frame, one for the gold scroll, and one for the subtle shadow to give it an embossed look.

 
layers

 
resulting stages