While performing as a musician for the Fashion Week in Delhi, artist Nick Cattermole took a lot of photographs around the McLeod Ganj area of India. Nick’s two primary subjects in this photo series are monkeys and monks. These are subjects whose relationship to each other — in my eyes — is bound only by their English spelling and co-existence in a geographic region. But Nick has put together an interesting body of work that combines the inhabitants of both temples and forests in McLeod Ganj.

I love that Nick uses our ToonIt! Photo plugin to transform his photographs into delicate illustrations. Many people use ToonIt! for more ‘aggressive’ images, which is what cartoons typically look like, all thick black lines and bold heavy color fields. Nick’s illustrations are instead turned into soft, thin lines over a jeweled, geometric pattern of color.

Monk walking in the village, post-ToonIt! treatment:

Original photograph by Nick:

A great aspect of our Adobe Photoshop cartooning plugin is its ability to easily create a variety of visual styles. You can see some variations on this Color Styles page and this Cel-Shaded Styles page.

Nick’s illustrative treatment is very apparent in the closeups of his subjects. In the images below, the monkey’s expression is bought out by the color and contrast changes made in ToonIt! and Photoshop. The muted tones of brown and custard make a sensitive color palette.

Cartoon version #1. The new light eyes are very appealing.

Original photograph by Nick:

Cartoon version #2. Mixes in the dark/light contrast of the original photo.

Hmmm, no photographs of monkeys INSIDE the temples just yet… You can see more of Nick Cattermole’s photography and his Toonit! Photo work in our online gallery on www.digitalanarchy.com.

regards -Debbie