French lavender

I was trying to create a painterly image for wall art that my wife might like, so I started with a beautifully decorated farm house in France in which virtually every window was embellished by flowers. The shot was a tight close up of the house, so I used generative expand in Photoshop to enlarge it quite a bit. I then composited a row of lavender flowers to create an attractive foreground and multiple leading lines. Finally, I replaced the sky. To blend the foreground and background, I used a layer mask and the gradient tool. Adobe changed the gradient tool, not to my liking, I might add, so I had to switch to the 'classic gradient'. This option is shown in the upper left corner of the tool bar when the gradient tool is selected.